Development of a highly controlled system for large-area, directional printing of quasi-1D nanomaterials

Printing is a promising method for the large-scale, high-throughput, and low-cost fabrication of electronics. Specifically, the contact printing approach shows great potential for realizing high-performance electronics with aligned quasi-1D materials. Despite being known for more than a decade, reports on a precisely controlled system to carry out contact printing are rare and printed nanowires (NWs) suffer from issues such as location-to-location and batch-to-batch variations. To address this problem, we present here a novel design for a tailor-made contact printing system with highly accurate control of printing parameters (applied force: 0–6 N ± 0.3%, sliding velocity: 0–200 mm/s, sliding distance: 0–100 mm) to enable the uniform printing of nanowires (NWs) aligned along 93% of the large printed area (1 cm(2)). The system employs self-leveling platforms to achieve optimal alignment between substrates, whereas the fully automated process minimizes human-induced variation. The printing dynamics of the developed system are explored on both rigid and flexible substrates. The uniformity in printing is carefully examined by a series of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and by fabricating a 5 × 5 array of NW-based photodetectors. This work will pave the way for the future realization of highly uniform, large-area electronics based on printed NWs.