Flexible conductive polymer polarizer designed for a chemical tag.

Conductive polymers with high solids loading (> 40wt.%) are challenging to pattern to single micron feature sizes and require unique techniques or templates to mold the material. The development of a conductive polymer optical tag is discussed for identifying the presence of hydrofluoric acid (HF) and leverages free standing silicon fins as a template utilizing deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) techniques will be discussed. This work is aimed towards a future flexible conductive polymer tag to be transferred via adhesive or epoxy for a novel sensor surface. The advantage to this technique over wafer thinning is a higher throughput of device manufacture without damage to the silicon fins or polymer due to chemical-mechanical interactions or added protective layers. The gratings consist of a high spatial frequency (1.15 μm pitch) grating consisting of lines of conductive polymer and lines of silicon which are free standing. A novel running bond pattern aims to minimize the intrinsic stress and allows the conductive polymer to infiltrate without distorting the template. The polymer conductivity mechanism has been designed to break down under a chemical binding to fluorine; changing its conductivity upon exposure, and results in a change in the polarization response. The use of the polarization response makes the signal more robust to intensity fluctuations in the background or interrogation system. Additionally, the use of optical interrogation allows for standoff detection in instances where hazardous conditions may be present. Examples of material and device responses will be shown and directions for further investigation are discussed.