• Mills, Benjamin
• Grant-Jacob, James A.
• Eason, Robert W.
• Hoppenbrouwers, M. B.
• Oosterhuis, G.
• Sones, Collin
• Feinäugle, M.

Abstract

Metallic deposition is important for an array of scientific and technological applications. Standard deposition techniques include sputtering, evaporation and chemical vapour deposition (CVD) [1], however, these all lack the ability to achieve spatial patterning without subsequent processing steps. Methods such as e-beam lithography and focused ion beam milling can be used for surface patterning of metals and other materials [2], but they generally require vacuum conditions and can therefore be very time consuming, or for some applications, prohibitively long. Here, we report on the direct deposition of copper using laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) [3], a technique that uses ultrashort laser pulses to transfer material from a thin-film donor to a receiver substrate, in combination with a novel donor replenishment scheme. We demonstrate the printing of sub-millimetre long copper lines that are a few microns wide and sub-micron in height. The resistivity of the copper lines measured so far is a factor of 10 higher than that of bulk copper, but we will report our most recent results on reduction of printed line resistance through LIFT process parameter optimization.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• surface
• resistivity
• grinding
• milling
• focused ion beam
• copper
• evaporation
• chemical vapor deposition
• lithography