A plate-to-roll nanoimprint lithography (P2RNIL) system has been developed to realize a high-speed, large-scale and high-resolution nanoimprint process. Imprinted patterns have been achieved with a linewidth of less than 75 nm at a speed of 22 cm2 s−1 on flexible substrate. To improve the quality of the imprinted patterns, we have proposed a compliant mechanism which can realize passive alignment and minimize the lateral displacement between template and substrate. Finite element analysis of this compliant mechanism was carried out. By using the P2RNIL system, wire-grid polarizers (up to a 10 030:1 extinction ratio and up to 88% transmittance) and transparent metal electrodes whose performance is in good accordance with simulated results were successfully fabricated.

A double-sided nanoimprint lithography metal transfer method has been developed to fabricate a flexible capacitive touch sensor. The electrodes of this sensor are aligned and overlapped to each other and consist of a diamond aluminum mesh, which achieved a transmittance of 94% and anisotropic surface resistivity. The maximum capacitance change of the touch sensor unit is up to 41.8% when fullly touched. A 3 × 3 sensor array was tested to prove good touch detection function and the potential for large-scale applications.

Nanoimprint lithography has long been considered a way of fabricating micronano structures in a high-efficiency manner. Based on this method, various 2D and 3D structures with feature sizes ranging from a few micrometers down to a single nanometer have been demonstrated. Here, we present the mechanical and control system design of recently developed plate-to-roll nanoimprint equipment. To improve the parallelism between the template and the substrate, we propose a three voice coil motor actuated mechanical structure and improved proportion integration differentiation algorithm, which can provide fast response and precise positioning. We used a template with a grooved structure to test the embossing performance. By using the nanoimprint system, an electrode array based on a metal mesh transparent conductive material was fabricated on a flexible substrate, which shows the great potential of this system for the fabrication of flexible devices.

High-speed and high-efficiency photodiodes are especially beneficial for exponential data communication traffic growth. However, improving high responsivity while maintaining low dark current and high bandwidth remains a challenge for vertical detector design. This study proposes a plasmonic InP/InGaAs uni-traveling-carrier photodiode with optical antenna arrays, which exhibits a low dark current of 2.52 nA at a −3 V bias voltage, a high bandwidth of over 40 GHz, and a high responsivity of 0.12 A/W. The absorption efficiency of the photodiode shows 2-fold improvement using plasmonic resonance generated by nanodisks at 1550 nm. This work designs a low dark current and high-bandwidth photodiode with improved responsivity, which provides a potential method for high-speed vertical photodiode design.