Multiple-Energy-Assisted Ultrasharp Probe-Based Nanomanufacturing for High-Resolution and High-Efficiency Nanopatterning

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Nanomanufacturing is the manufacture of sub-100 nanometer patterns, components, devices, and systems. Over the past few decades, nanomanufacturing progress has greatly advanced many fundamental research fields from physics to biology and has generated numerous commercial applications, such as biomedical products, semiconductor components, and energy devices. However, high-resolution manufacturing of sub-10 nanometer feature sizes remains a scientific challenge. This award supports fundamental research to create and understand ultrasharp probe-based nanomanufacturing processes for high-resolution and high-efficiency nanopatterning. By using strong and thin carbon nanotubes as patterning tools, this new ultrasharp probe-based nanomanufacturing paradigm will enable high-efficiency manufacturing down to sub-10 nm level and will accelerate innovations in high-resolution flexible and scalable manufacturing. This research will enable a number of science and engineering research and applications, will impact a number of industries, and will help boost the US economy. This research will provide scientific training and research experience to graduate and undergraduate students, particularly women and minorities, from various outreach programs at Binghamton University. Research results will be incorporated into existing advanced manufacturing and nanotechnology courses and will be disseminated through journal and conference publications and through outreach programs to local K-12 students.The goal of this project is to create and understand an ultrasharp probe-based nanomanufacturing technique for high-resolution and high-efficiency nanopatterning down to sub-10 nanometer feature level. This research will integrate electrical field, Joule heating, and mechanical vibration with an atomic force microscope to create an efficient nanomanufacturing platform to overcome the barriers of existing maskless nanomanufacturing techniques. The research team will manufacture machining tools from ultrasharp carbon nanotube atomic force microscope probes, with customized nanotube lengths and orientations, by using an electron microscopy nanomechanical single-nanotube pull-out technique. The team will experimentally characterize the patterning resolution, the manufacturing efficiency, and the tool lifetime. To understand the mechanism of the manufacturing technique, the research team will simulate electric flux density to uncover how the manufacturing parameters, such as the applied voltage and the thickness of resists, govern the resolution of the manufacturing process. Statistical and semi-empirical models will be built to unveil the relationships between the input parameters and the nanomanufacturing performance. This research will also combine the high-resolution manufacturing process with soft lithography to enable flexible and scalable high-resolution nanomanufacturing. It is envisioned that this research will enable a number of new technologies for biomedical, electronic, and energy applications in the research, industrial and governmental sectors.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.