Micromachined printhead for the patterning of organic materials and metals

This paper describes the design, fabrication and testing of an electrostatically actuated microshutter used as an active shadow mask to pattern evaporated materials. The microshutter and its comb-drive actuator are built on the device layer of an SOI wafer. Deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) is used to pattern both the device layer and etch a through-wafer hole through which the evaporated materials travel. The actuation voltage of the device is about 30 volts, its resonant frequency is several kHz. The microshutter integrated with an x-y-z manipulator was used to print patterns of organic material and metal on glass substrates in vacuum with a resolution of 30 microns. This printing scheme could enable the patterning of large area organic optoelectronic devices on diverse substrates.