CAREER: Three-Dimensional Nanolithography with Inexpensive Hardware

这项教师早期职业发展（Career）资助将开创一种利用光与胶体纳米颗粒相互作用的新型三维纳米光刻系统。在纳米尺度上创造三维物体的能力使独特的材料特性和设备性能成为可能。然而，几乎所有现有的光刻系统都是基于复杂的机械、电子和光学硬件，价格昂贵得令人望而却步。该奖项支持为三维纳米光刻技术提供所需知识的基础研究，该技术完全基于胶体光相互作用，而不是目前昂贵的光刻技术，因此纳米光刻技术具有廉价的硬件。新工艺的重点是胶体纳米粒子，它将作为基本的构建块，可以操纵和塑造纳米尺度图案的光。该系统将使复杂三维纳米结构的可扩展打印成为可能，用于无针药物输送、多功能材料和可拉伸传感器。这项研究的结果将在生物医学、能源、电子和航空航天工业中得到广泛应用，这将有利于美国经济并推动其制造业的发展。这项研究是跨学科的，将进一步理解纳米技术，物理，材料科学和工程。综合研究和教育目标将通过K-12学生、教师、家长和当地社区对纳米技术和纳米制造的直接参与，大大增加社会上的工程教育。本研究旨在克服现有3D纳米光刻系统的主要障碍，这些系统可能具有高操作成本，有限的图案分辨率和/或低制造吞吐量。最先进的直接写入方法，如电子束、聚焦离子束、双光子光刻，可以实现精细的特征，并在实验室设备演示中发挥了关键作用。然而，这些系统需要串行模式和逐层处理，耗时且难以扩展。这项研究与传统的硬件密集型光刻方法不同，取而代之的是胶体纳米颗粒，这些纳米颗粒被照亮以产生丰富的近场光学纳米图案。通过调整光属性和粒子参数，这种相互作用将被利用为一种新的机制来绘制复杂的3D几何图形。这种方法结合了“自下而上”自组装的成本效益，同时保留了“自上而下”光刻的用户指定模式可控性。研究团队将对近场光粒子相互作用进行严格的建模，以研究图像形成机制，开发制造工艺以控制结构几何形状和材料成分，减轻工艺缺陷并提高放大原型系统的产量，并演示复杂3D纳米结构在新型功能器件中的连续打印。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will pioneer a novel three-dimensional nanolithography system using light interactions with colloidal nanoparticles. The ability to create a three-dimensional object at the nanoscale has enabled unique material properties and device performances. However, almost all of the existing lithography systems are based on complicated mechanical, electronic, and optical hardware that can be prohibitively expensive. This award supports fundamental research to provide the required knowledge for three-dimensional nanolithography that is based solely on colloid-light interactions instead of current expensive lithography, hence nanolithography with inexpensive hardware. The new process focuses on colloidal nanoparticles, which will serve as elementary building blocks that can manipulate and shape light for nanoscale patterning. This system will enable scalable printing of complex three-dimensional nanostructures for needleless drug delivery, multifunctional materials, and stretchable sensors. The results of this research will find broad application in biomedical, energy, electronic, and aerospace industries that will benefit the U.S. economy and the advance its manufacturing sector. This research is interdisciplinary and will further understandings in nanotechnology, physics, materials science, and engineering. The integrated research and educational goals will greatly increase engineering education in society through direct engagement of K-12 students, teachers, parents, and the local community in nanotechnology and nanomanufacturing. This research aims to overcome the key barriers to existing 3D nanolithography systems, which can have high operating cost, limited patterning resolution, and/or low fabrication throughput. State-of-the-art direct-write approaches, such as electron-beam, focused-ion-beam, two-photon lithography, can achieve fine features and have played critical roles in laboratory device demonstrations. However, these systems require serial patterning and layer-by-layer processes that are time intensive and difficult to scale. This research diverges from the traditional hardware-intensive approaches to lithography, and replaces them with colloidal nanoparticles that are illuminated to generate a wealth of near-field optical nanopatterns. By tailoring the light properties and particle parameters, such interactions will be harnessed as a novel mechanism to pattern complex 3D geometries. This approach combines the cost-effectiveness of "bottom-up" self-assembly, while retaining the user-specified pattern controllability of "top-down" lithography. The research team will perform rigorous modeling of near-field light-particle interactions to investigate the image formation mechanism, develop fabrication processes to control structure geometry and material composition, mitigate process defects and increase yield in a scale-up prototype system, and demonstrate continuous printing of complex 3D nanostructures into novel functional devices.