Research and Development of a Nanostructure Deposition System

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- Methodology: The proposed research is motivated by supporting results that have been gathered at the PIs former laboratory in Minnesota before he transitioned to Germany in 2012 (CV, has details). The main goal of this proposal is to gain fundamental understanding and control of the discovered process which is an atmospheric pressure gas phase deposition method. The process has the potential to enable the production of nanostructured deposits beyond what is currently possible. Specifically, we believe that it is possible to enable the production of nearly arbitrary 3D (instead of 2D) and heterogeneous multimaterial composite nanostructured deposits (instead of homogenous and unimaterial/function) with high resolution (~10 nm). The process, as it is understood so far is based on the interplay between high mobility gas ions, lower mobility charged nanoparticles, and a patterned programmable substrate which supports filamentation of the material flux and growth pattern. Specifically, at sufficiently high gas pressure nanostructures can be grown whereby the composition and 3D shape can be locally adjusted with a level of control that we have not seen before. We would like to gain understanding of the underlying mechanism and propose to install and research a modular system that integrates nanomaterial synthesis, nanomaterial transport, programmable selected area multimaterial deposition, and inspection in one apparatus.- Application: While the research is driven by basic science questions the process should find application in an emerging field that is referred to as Nanomanufacturing. It is already established that nanostructured materials provide a variety of size dependent functions whose discovery has driven the 1st phase of nanoscience. The 2nd phase anticipates a positive impact on society, which has been hampered by a lack of scalable Nanomanufacturing methods that enable the integration of functional nanostructures at addressable locations on various substrates with high precision and yield. The proposed research project addresses this challenge. It advances fundamental science questions to achieve a longer term goal in the field of Nanomanufacturing which is the realization of a scalable deposition process to produce novel multimaterial 3D nanostructured deposits.