Shrinkable and Stretchable NanoManufacturing

该奖项为开发一种新的纳米制造战略提供资金：可收缩和可拉伸的纳米制造。这些低成本和可扩展的纳米制造工具基于热塑性材料和成型技术。这项研究的重点是在可编程软光刻中使用热塑性材料来确定可以从一个母版开始制造的大面积纳米管的下限(可收缩)和上限(可拉伸)。还将研究以周期晶格母版开始的层次化和低对称性晶格图案的产生。最终，这些新工具的目标是通过在晶片规模上进行多次收缩和模塑，在特征尺寸和晶格间距上达到10 nm的分辨率。如果成功，这项工作将解决纳米制造中的两大挑战：(1)纳米级图案的原型和缩放；以及(2)降低制造的工艺和材料成本。计划中的战略可以克服这两个问题，同时为未来如何对周期性和有序的纳米结构进行纳米制造引入了路线图。重要的是，关键因素只取决于现成的聚合物和具有预先存在的基础设施的成型方法。模压成型消除了对光源的需要，原则上可以获得10纳米以下的特征。此外，由于热塑性塑料基板已经在工业中加工(例如收缩包装的车辆)，计划中的纳米制造战略可以直接集成到当前环境中，以降低总体生命周期成本。

This award provides funding for the development of a new nanofabrication strategy: shrinkable and stretchable nanomanufacturing. These low-cost and scalable nanomanufacturing tools are based on thermoplastic materials and molding techniques. The research focuses on using thermoplastic materials in programmable soft lithography to determine the lower limits (shrinkable) and upper limits (stretchable) of large-area nanopatterns that can be fabricated starting from one master pattern. The production of hierarchical and low-symmetry lattice patterns beginning with a periodic lattice master will also be investigated. Ultimately, the goal of these new tools is to achieve 10-nm resolution in both feature sizes and lattice spacing using multiple cycles of shrinking and molding over wafer-scale areas.If successful, this work will address two major challenges in nanomanufacturing: (1) prototyping and scaling of nanoscale patterns; and (2) reducing the processing and materials cost of fabrication. The planned strategy can overcome both problems while introducing a roadmap for how nanofabrication can be carried out in the future for periodic and ordered nanostructures. Importantly, the key factors only depend on readily available polymers and molding methods having a pre-existing infrastructure. Molding eliminates the need for a light source and can, in principle, access sub 10-nm features. Also, since thermoplastic substrates are already processed in industry (e.g. shrink-wrapped vehicles), the planned nanomanufacturing strategy can be directly integrated in current settings to reduce overall life cycle costs.