Non-Adhesive Transfer Process of Carbon Nanotube Forests onto Flexible Kapton Substrates

Prevalence of electronic gadgets has been on the rise and among several considerations that are important for furthering frontiers of utility of new gadgets is mechanical flexibility of electronic systems. Flexible electronics require functional materials to be held by flexible substrates that can be bent to small radii of curvature. In addition, the functionality of the active material has to remain intact during the process of bending. There have been challenges in the transfer process of functional materials onto flexible substrates as well as challenges in maintaining the functionality of these materials during the bending process. Here we demonstrate transfer of carbon nanotubes, a highly studied electronic material, onto flexible substrates, mainly kapton. We study the optimum conditions of adhesion, pressure and temperature required to obtain the strongest transferred layer. We further study the limits on the radius of curvature that the substrate can be bent to.