Manufacturing of Self-Powered Nanosensor Systems by Pulsed Laser Processing

经济上可行的自供电微纳设备有望为医疗保健、环境、消费和军事应用领域的技术带来革命性的变化。压电纳米线可以将机械能转化为电能，扩大了植入式生物医学设备的应用范围。它们可以在太阳能不可靠的地方使用。然而，纳米和微系统要充分发挥其潜力，还有很大的障碍。目前用于制造这些系统的方法需要许多离散的过程、昂贵的设备以及洁净室环境，从而导致高昂的成本。每一道工序都需要很长的准备、处理和加工时间。为了提高生产能力，必须对自动化进行巨额投资，只有在大规模生产时才有理由这样做。总体而言，成本已成为获取大多数纳米技术创新好处的障碍。因此，纳米制造的需要是开发创新的灵活工艺，使其能够集成到高效的中小型批量生产中。该奖项旨在研究能够完成处理异质纳米材料并将其集成到一个设备中所需的多项任务的单一设备。非洁净室方法是可扩展的，并已显示出氧化锌纳米线性能的两个数量级以上的改进，将六道工序减少为一道工序，并将设备投资减少到原来的十分之一。这项研究促进了对这种处理和集成异质材料和设备的单步方法的能力和性能的基本理解。该项目计划招收女性和未被充分代表的少数族裔研究生，将研究成果用于新的课程，并组织研讨会作为激发和交流新思想的平台。该项目的总体目标是研究和开发一种新的集成纳米制造工艺，用于自供电纳米传感器系统。这项研究涉及了解这些材料和系统中的工艺-结构-性能-性能关系。本研究项目的目的是揭示脉冲激光制备的氧化锌纳米线阵列的成核密度、生长和形貌之间的关系；纳米线阵列的压电性能和形态之间的关系；压电纳米发电机组件的性能和压电性能之间的关系；以及纳米传感器与自供电纳米发电机系统的集成。本研究的主要成果是了解了脉冲激光参数、晶体成核和形貌控制之间的机理和相互关系，以及它对自供电纳米传感系统中材料性能和性能的影响。

Economically viable self-powered micro and nano devices promise to revolutionize technologies in healthcare, environmental, consumer and military applications. Piezoelectric nanowires can convert mechanical energy into electrical power, and extend the applications for implanted biomedical devices. They can be used where solar energy is unreliable. However, there are significant roadblocks for nano and micro systems to realize their full potential. Current methods used for making these systems require many discrete processes, expensive equipment in addition to a clean room environment resulting in prohibitive cost. Each process requires long preparation, handling and processing times. For faster throughput, huge investments must be made for automation, justifiable only for mass production. In general, cost has become a roadblock against capturing the benefits of most nanotechnology innovations. Therefore, a need in nanomanufacturing is to develop innovative flexible processes that enable integration for efficient small and medium lot size production. This award is to work on a single equipment that can perform multiple tasks required for processing heterogeneous nanomaterials and integrating them into a device. The non-cleanroom method is scalable and has shown more than two-orders-of-magnitude improvement in zinc oxide nanowire performance, reduction of six processes in to one, and reduction of equipment investment by a factor of ten. This research advances the fundamental understanding of the capabilities and performance of this single-step approach for processing and integrating heterogeneous materials and devices. The project plans to recruit female and under-represented minority graduate students, use the research results in new coursework and organize symposia as a platform for stimulating and exchanging new ideas.The overarching goal of this project is to study and develop a novel integrated nanomanufacturing process for self-powered nanosensor systems. The research involves understanding the process-structure-properties-performance relationships in these materials and systems. The objectives of this research project are to uncover the correlations among the nucleation density, growth and morphology of the ZnO nanowire arrays produced by a pulsed laser; the correlation of the piezoelectric properties and the morphology of the ZnO nanowire arrays; the correlation of the performance of the piezoelectric nanogenerator subassembly and the piezoelectric properties, and the integration of a nanosensor into the self-powered nanogenerator system. The main outcome of this research is the understanding of the mechanisms and relationships among pulsed laser parameters, crystal nucleation and morphology control of ZnO nanowire arrays, and its impact on the material properties and performance in self-powered nanosensing systems.