Nanodroplet-Confined Electroplating Enables Submicron Printing of Metals and Oxide Ceramics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel electroplating technique that uses droplet confinement to enable high-resolution, multi-material deposition of metals and oxides, advancing nano-electronic device fabrication.

Contribution

It demonstrates the first direct co-deposition of metals and metal-oxides at the nanoscale using droplet confined electroplating with material switching.

Findings

Enables direct deposition of metals and oxides.

Achieves multi-material structures at the nanoscale.

Utilizes simple water-based electrochemical principles.

Abstract

The fabrication of functional micro- and nano-electronic devices requires the deposition of high-quality materials of different electronic material classes, such as conductors, semiconductors and insulators. To establish ultra-high-resolution additive manufacturing as a viable addition to existing fabrication methods requires the combinatorial additive deposition of different electronic material classes. However, current techniques do not provide such a capability. Here, we demonstrate that droplet confined electroplating, an ultra-high-resolution AM technique initially developed for metals as electrohydrodynamic redox printing (EHD-RP), allows not only the direct deposition of many metals, but also of metal-oxides. Particularly, we demonstrate that applying fundamental electrochemical principles in combination with on-the-fly switching of the deposited material allows for the direct co-deposition of metals, metal-hydroxides and -oxides. Our results exemplify the feasibility of leveraging simple water-based electrochemical concepts to produce intricate and multi-material structures at the nanoscale.