Deposition of thin films via forward and backward femtosecond laser-induced transfer using spatial beam shaping via a digital micromirror device

Eason, R.W., Feinäugle, M., Heath, D.J., Grant-Jacob, J.A. and Mills, B. (2015) Deposition of thin films via forward and backward femtosecond laser-induced transfer using spatial beam shaping via a digital micromirror device. E-MRS Spring Meeting, Lille, France. 10 - 14 May 2015.

Abstract

Laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) is a technique for depositing pixels from thin film donor materials. During LIFT, a pixel is released from a donor-coated transparent receiver placed in contact or close proximity to a receiver substrate due to the action of the laser pulse/pulses absorbed in a small volume of the donor or auxiliary sacrificial layer. In contrast to forward transfer, if the (transparent) receiver substrate lies in the beam path, pixels can be transferred in the backward direction and the process is then referred to as laser-induced backward transfer (LIBT).

If transfer of pixels is required with specific shapes however, then there are two choices: use a fixed aperture to spatially format the incident laser pulse, or use a spatial light modulator to dynamically pattern the spatial profile of the incident laser pulse. In this work we have used a spatial light modulator (a Texas Instruments digital micromirror device, DMD) to adaptively control the incident laser pulse to have spatial profiles such as geometric and alphabetic shapes for both LIFT and LIBT. The clear advantage of using the DMD approach is that pixels of essentially arbitrary shapes can be transferred on a shot-to-shot basis.

We have investigated DMD-assisted transfer of a range of materials including glasses, compound semiconductors, silicon and polymers, with the greatest success in terms of shape fidelity and lack of material damage in the case of the latter. Features have been printed via LIFT and LIBT with size scales in the region of tens of microns, and we will present our most recent optimised results and draw conclusions concerning the more widespread use of DMD-assisted materials transfer.

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Contributors

Author: R.W. Eason

Author: J.A. Grant-Jacob

Author: B. Mills

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