Materials and processing issues for the manufacturing of integrated passive and active devices on flexible substrates

Plast_ICs is a Public/Private Laboratory funded by Italian Government aimed to build a novel technological platform for the development of flexible electronics, mainly, but not solely, based on thin inorganic films. Integration of different functions, on single and/or multiple plastic foils, to generate a smart system is the final goal of the project. The building blocks of the platform will be presented, starting from the different plastic substrates characterization, going through the development of active devices, such as thin-film- transistors, and passive devices, like thin-film- resistors, capacitors, inductors. Fully inorganic elementary devices, based on optical patterning and in vacuum thin films deposition on plastic foil will be reported. The performance of each elementary device will be related to fundamental properties of the enabling materials and to the processing conditions. The ability to control and tailor the microstructural properties of the very low temperature deposited thin films enable good dielectric properties for the formation of high density capacitors and good thermal behavior for the formation of precision resistors. The use of optimized laser process allows the poly Si regrowth for the formation of active regions of transistors.