ZrO$_2$ tapes as an alternative low-cost flexible substrate to artificially nanostructured materials

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that ZrO$_2$ green tape can serve as a low-cost, flexible substrate for nanostructure fabrication, maintaining magnetic and electrical properties comparable to rigid substrates, enabling new applications in flexible sensors.

Contribution

It introduces ZrO$_2$ green tape as a novel, cost-effective flexible substrate for nanostructures, showing consistent properties across different substrate types.

Findings

Magnetic and electrical properties are preserved across substrates.

ZrO$_2$ tape enables flexible, low-cost sensor development.

Reproducibility of nanostructures on different substrates.

Abstract

We associate tape casting and magnetron sputtering techniques to engineer flexible nanostructures using ZrO$_2$ green tape as substrate. We systematically investigate the structural, magnetic and electrical properties of NiFe/Cr/NiFe trilayer nanostructures, with variable thickness values of the NiFe and Cr layers, grown onto rigid glass and flexible ZrO$_2$ tape substrates. We verify the mirroring of these properties in the trilayer nanostructures, irrespective on the kind of employed substrate. The fact that the trilayer nanostructures can be reproduced in distinct substrates corresponds to an important advance for their applicability. The results place the ZnO$_2$ green tape as an attractive candidate for application as low-cost flexible substrate in the development of electrical and magnetic sensor elements with high sensitivity to mechanic stress.