Shrinkable and Stretchable NanoManufacturing

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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.