Nanomanufacturing of Hierarchical Colloidal Nanomaterials Using Multi-scale Interactions

一个重要的纳米制造挑战是开发快速和连续的制造方案来控制材料结构，从单个纳米颗粒的尺寸（纳米）到组装的微观结构（微米），再到感兴趣的电磁波长（微米到米）的设备特征。这种多尺度材料在自然界中经常被观察到，在蝴蝶和甲虫翅膀的光子结构中，或者在木材、丝绸和贝壳的常见机械元件中。不幸的是，仍然缺乏合成方法来创建包含天然材料的复杂性和层次性特征的大规模材料。该奖项的目标是发展必要的基本理解，以创造一种方法来制造多尺度胶体纳米材料。该项目将在运输、装配和聚合等关键科学和技术领域取得进展。生产胶体纳米材料的组装工艺的发展对于任何旨在控制电磁辐射的应用都是有用的，例如，传感器和太阳能电池，以及更奇特的新兴应用，如光学计算和光学隐形。拓展工作包括高中生和本科生在实验室的参与。参与该项目的学生将被鼓励在会议上发言，并参与当地小学的额外推广工作。分层胶体材料纳米制造项目是基于将强相互作用和弱相互作用结合起来，实现在大面积上连续组装纳米颗粒结构的加工方法。该方法依赖于耦合流体动力学和毛细管相互作用，在预定义的图案表面上快速运输和组织纳米颗粒负载的液滴，通过场介导的相互作用平衡体对流和局部扩散介导的纳米颗粒微结构组装，并通过可聚合介质快速阻止或固定结构以淬火纳米颗粒配置。单独来说，这些步骤可以与现有技术相结合，但将它们结合起来会带来重大的工程和科学挑战。例如，有必要协调与扩散、毛细和水动力输运相关的不同时间和长度尺度，以便在一个步骤中形成多尺度结构。考虑到这些过程运行的尺度之间的不完美分离，了解如何在它们竞争和/或耦合的制度中控制相互作用将通过光学显微镜和模拟来完成。

An important nanomanufacturing challenge is to develop rapid and continuous manufacturing schemes to control material structures from the dimensions of individual nanoparticles (nanometers), to assembled microstructures (micrometers), to device features on the order of the electromagnetic wavelengths of interest (micrometer to meters). Such multi-scale materials are routinely observed in nature in photonic architectures within butterfly and beetle wings, or in common mechanical elements within wood, silk, and sea shells. Unfortunately, synthetic approaches to create large scale materials that encompass both the complexity and hierarchical features found in natural materials are still lacking. The objective of this award is to develop the fundamental understanding necessary for the creation of a method to fabricate multiscale colloidal nanomaterials. The project will result in advancements in critical scientific and technological areas such as transport, assembly and polymerization. The development of assembly processes to produce colloidal nanomaterials is useful for any application that aims to manipulate electromagnetic radiation, for example, sensors and solar cells, and more exotic emerging applications like optical computing and optical cloaking. Outreach efforts include engagement and participation of high school and undergraduate students in the laboratory. Students participating in the project will be encouraged to present at conferences and be involved with additional outreach efforts at local elementary schools.The hierarchical colloidal materials nanomanufacturing project is based on combining strong and weak interactions towards a processing method that continuously assembles nanoparticle structures over a large area. This approach relies on coupling hydrodynamics and capillary interactions for rapid transport and organization of nanoparticle-loaded droplets on predefined patterned surfaces, balancing bulk convection and local diffusion-mediated assembly of nanoparticle microstructures via field-mediated interactions, and rapidly arresting or immobilizing structures through polymerizable media to quench nanoparticle configurations. Individually, these steps can be met with existing technologies, but combining them brings significant engineering and scientific challenges. For example, it is necessary to orchestrate the disparate time- and length-scales associated with diffusive, capillary, and hydrodynamic transport to enable multiscale structure formation in a single step. Given the imperfect separation between the scales at which these processes operate, understanding of how to control interactions in regimes where they compete and/or are coupled will be accomplished via optical microscopy, and simulations.