Plastic reaches to meet silicon guide

Science News,  Sept 18, 1999  

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For cheap, flexible electronics made mainly from plastics to become feasible, scientists must find new ways to build integrated circuits. The methods used for today's semiconductor-and-metal components employ ultraviolet light, solvents, and other chemicals that destroy plastics.

Stephen Y. Chou and his colleagues at Princeton University report a new technique, benign to polymers, that forms micrometer-scale patterns. The researchers enticed a flat, featureless coating of melted Plexiglas to grow upward to meet a silicon template, or mask. They found hints that the technique might also work for features smaller than a micrometer, Chou says.

The new, uplifting approach, described in the Aug. 16 APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS, differs radically from traditional circuit printing. There, semiconductor or metal atoms deposit except where a coating repels them.

Why the new technique works is "unclear," says Chou, and therefore he finds it "scientifically very intriguing."

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