Sol–gel and transfer technique for fabricating dual ceramic thin film patterns on plastics

A technique that realizes alternating, two kinds of ceramic ribbons on plastics is proposed. An Si(100) plate with periodic trenches coated with a polyimide (PI)-polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) mixture layer was used as the mother substrate. An indium–tin–oxide (ITO) thin film was deposited on the mother substrate by the sol–gel method with a firing process, followed by transferring it to a polycarbonate (PC) substrate by melting the PC surface in contact with the ITO thin film. This resulted in patterned ITO ribbons on the PC substrate where the ridges of PC were formed between the ribbons. A ZnO thin film was prepared on a flat Si(100) substrate coated with a PI-PVP mixture layer, followed by firing, and then was transferred on the PC ridges in the same manner, resulting in alternating ITO and ZnO ribbons on the PC substrate. The technique proposed here allows dense, alternating ceramic ribbons to be fabricated on plastics irrespective of the combinations of ceramics and plastics.