Transfer Printing of Epitaxial Organic Semiconductor Films

Thanks to the commercial success of organic light-emitting diodes, organic electronics is now much more than just a niche alternative to traditional electronics. However, other types of devices based on organic semiconductors (OSCs) are still far from market readiness. A key limitation is that, in thin-film form, OSCs exhibit a high level of structural disorder. Of all strategies for growing films of OSCs, those relying on organic epitaxy yield films whose properties most closely resemble those of single crystals. Yet, this comes at a cost: conventional substrates for epitaxial growth are incompatible with practical device integration. To overcome this issue, we introduce a transfer printing method capable of relocating epitaxially grown films of OSCs from their native substrates to target, device-compatible ones. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by transferring highly crystalline rubrene films─grown via organic molecular beam epitaxy and characterized by coherently oriented, micrometer-scale domains and single-crystal-like optical response─from amino acid single crystals to technologically relevant substrates. Notably, morphology, optical characteristics, and photoluminescence dynamics of the films are fully retained following transfer.