Computationally-Guided Manufacturing of Nanowires and Nanowire Devices

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Semiconductor nanowires have unique properties that make them prominent candidates for the next generation high-performance electronic devices, chemical and biological sensors, solar cells, and photonics devices that can potentially impact every industrial sector. However, current technologies for producing nanowires are not suitable for commercial scale manufacturing. Because nanowires are often produced as an entangled mesh, complicated fabrication procedures are required to select, position, and align nanowires in placement required for making devices. This award supports research to investigate a novel semiconductor nanowire manufacturing technology that overcomes the above-mentioned obstacles. The research team will develop a unique and first of its kind technology for manufacturing nanowires with controlled dimension, composition, orientation, placement, property, and functionality necessary for large scale manufacturing of nanowire devices. The project will involve multiple disciplines including nanomanufacturing, computational modeling of materials synthesis, high precision control, and manufacturing system integration. As nanowire devices will find a broad range of applications in energy, healthcare, consumer electronics, and defense, results from this research will benefit the U.S. economy and society. In addition, the project will also help broaden participation of underrepresented groups in research, increase impact on education, and increase public awareness of nanoscience and nanotechnology.The enabling technology of the project is a laser-induced chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method recently developed at Purdue University. In this process, a laser beam is incident on a substrate, above which precursor gases such as silane and germane are heated and dissociated. Moving the substrate under computer control allows laser-guided growth of semiconductor nanowires with ultrahigh precision. The key to producing nanowires with dimensions of a few tens of nanometers is to utilize the interference effect between the incident laser beam and the surface scattered laser radiation. The research team will focus on computationally-guided manufacturing. It will generate computational models of the nanowire manufacturing process, and integrate them with advanced metrology tools, and feedback control in to a single manufacturing platform. As a result, this research will realize real-time control of the nanowire dimensions, properties, placements, and properties that is necessary for manufacturing nanowire devices at large scale.