Predictive patterning via solid-state dewetting of transferred single-crystal films

Designing and exploiting the dewetting of single-crystal films to create specific patterns for fabricating functional structures requires improved predictability and extensibility. In this study, we demonstrate that templated solid-state dewetting of single-crystal films can be guided to form regular patterns on arbitrary surfaces. This is achieved by adopting multiscale calculation schemes and implementing the dewetting results of single-crystal Pd(100) films transferred onto amorphous SiO₂ substrates. The anisotropies of Pd surface energy and gas adsorption strength lead to <001> and <011> in-plane facets, favoring the latter as oxygen adsorption increases or the hydrogen flow rate is sufficiently high. This leads to anisotropic dewetting patterns whose geometric characteristics depend significantly on initial crystallographic alignment and annealing ambient. A combination of computational and experimental methods is used to design and guide dewetting to create electrode patterns with submicron channels for thin-film transistors, demonstrating their feasibility for fabricating functional structures on various substrates.