Yue Zhang, Mengtian Yin, Yongmin Baek, Kyusang Kim, Giovnni Zangari, Liheng Cai, Baoxing Xu. Capillary Transfer of Soft Films. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2000340117
Existing transfer technologies in the construction of film-based electronics and devices are deeply established in the framework of native solid substrates. Here, we report a capillary approach that enables a fast, robust, and reliable transfer of soft films from liquid in a defect-free manner. This capillary transfer is underpinned by the transfer front of dynamic contact among receiver substrate, liquid, and film, and can be well controlled by a selectable motion direction of receiver substrates at a high speed. We demonstrate in extensive experiments, together with theoretical models and computational analysis, the robust capabilities of the capillary transfer using a versatile set of soft films with a broad material diversity of both film and liquid, surface-wetting properties, and complex geometric patterns of soft films onto various solid substrates in a deterministic manner.