Simple Patterning via Adhesion between a Buffered‐Oxide Etchant‐Treated PDMS Stamp and a SiO2 Substrate

A very simple polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) pattern‐transfer method is devised, called buffered‐oxide etchant (BOE) printing. The mechanism of pattern transfer is investigated, by considering the strong adhesion between the BOE‐treated PDMS and the SiO₂ substrate. PDMS patterns from a few micrometers to sub‐micrometer size are transferred to the SiO₂ substrate by just pressing a stamp that has been immersed in BOE solution for a few minutes. The patterned PDMS layers work as perfect physical and chemical passivation layers in the fabrication of metal electrodes and V₂O₅ nanowire channels, respectively. Interestingly, a second stamping of the BOE‐treated PDMS on the SiO₂ substrate pre‐patterned with metal as well as PDMS results in a selective transfer of the PDMS patterns only to the bare SiO₂. In this way, the fabrication of a device structure consisting of two Au electrodes and V₂O₅ nanowire network channels is possible; non‐ohmic semiconducting I–V characteristics, which can be modeled by serially connected percolation, are observed.