# Transfer Printing of Epitaxial Organic Semiconductor Films

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to transfer high-quality organic semiconductor films to practical substrates, preserving their excellent properties.

## Contribution

A transfer printing method for epitaxial organic semiconductor films that maintains their structural and optical quality.

## Key findings

- Highly crystalline rubrene films were transferred from amino acid substrates to device-compatible ones.
- The transferred films retained their morphology, optical characteristics, and photoluminescence dynamics.
- The method enables practical integration of epitaxial organic semiconductor films into devices.

## Abstract

Thanks to the commercial success of organic light-emitting
diodes,
organic electronics is now much more than just a niche alternative
to traditional electronics. However, other types of devices based
on organic semiconductors (OSCs) are still far from market readiness.
A key limitation is that, in thin-film form, OSCs exhibit a high level
of structural disorder. Of all strategies for growing films of OSCs,
those relying on organic epitaxy yield films whose properties most
closely resemble those of single crystals. Yet, this comes at a cost:
conventional substrates for epitaxial growth are incompatible with
practical device integration. To overcome this issue, we introduce
a transfer printing method capable of relocating epitaxially grown
films of OSCs from their native substrates to target, device-compatible
ones. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by transferring
highly crystalline rubrene filmsgrown via organic molecular
beam epitaxy and characterized by coherently oriented, micrometer-scale
domains and single-crystal-like optical responsefrom amino
acid single crystals to technologically relevant substrates. Notably,
morphology, optical characteristics, and photoluminescence dynamics
of the films are fully retained following transfer.