Fabrication of nanowire electronics on nonconventional substrates by water-assisted transfer printing method

We report a simple, versatile, and wafer-scale water-assisted transfer printing method (WTP) that enables the transfer of nanowire devices onto diverse nonconventional substrates that were not easily accessible before, such as paper, plastics, tapes, glass, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), aluminum foil, and ultrathin polymer substrates. The WTP method relies on the phenomenon of water penetrating into the interface between Ni and SiO(2). The transfer yield is nearly 100%, and the transferred devices, including NW resistors, diodes, and field effect transistors, maintain their original geometries and electronic properties with high fidelity.