Sidewall patterning of organic-inorganic multilayer thin film encapsulation by adhesion lithography.

A simple sidewall patterning process for organic-inorganic multilayer thin-film encapsulation (TFE) has been proposed and demonstrated. An AlO thin film grown by atomic layer deposition (ALD) was patterned by adhesion lithography using the difference in interfacial adhesion strength. The difference in interfacial adhesion strength was provided by the vapor-deposited fluoro-octyl-trichloro-silane self-assembled monolayer (SAM) patterns formed by a shadow mask. The sidewall patterning of multilayer TFE was shown possible by repeating the adhesion lithography and the vapor deposition of organic polymer and SAM patterns using shadow masks. The proposed process has the advantage of being able to pattern the blanket ALD-grown AlO thin films by adhesion lithography using a SAM pattern that can be more accurately predefined with a shadow mask.