Fine and high-aspect-ratio screen printing combined with an imprinting technique

The development of screen-printing techniques in order to obtain fine patterns with a high aspect ratio is an important task in the advancement of printed electronics. To this end, we propose a new printing concept in this study that consists of a combination of the screen-printing process with an imprinting technique. We show that fine and high-aspect-ratio patterns are realized by the capillary force of parallel-walled structures (PWSs) on the material to be printed. The PWS is fabricated by an imprinting method using an ultra-violet curable resin. In order to obtain finer patterns with a higher aspect ratio, printed patterns according to the pitch and the height of the PWSs were assessed. A printed pattern with a line width of 6.3 μm was obtained at a PWS, with a pitch of 20 μm and at a height of 110 μm, when a screen mask with a 100 μm-wide resist opening was used. The line width of the printed patterns was well controlled by the pitch of the PWSs. Moreover, an aspect ratio of up to 7.4 was achieved. Furthermore, we expect this screen-printing process to implement submicron patterns as well as more complex patterns, including curves and rings, through well-designed microstructures.