I-Corps: High-Throughout Manufacturing of Three-Dimensional Nanostructured Materials

I-Corps：三维纳米结构材料的高通量制造

• 批准号: 2223908
• 负责人: Chih-Hao Chang
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-07-01 至 2024-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2223908&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Throughout; Manufacturing; Three; Dimensional

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a scalable process to manufacture three-dimensional nanostructures with high resolution and throughput. The proposed technology may create nanostructures that have mechanical, optical, and thermal properties that are superior to traditional bulk materials. Three-dimensional nanostructured materials and nanolattices have many applications in industries such as electronics, photonics, and solar energy due to physical properties not observed in traditional macroscale materials. Nanostructured materials can have ultralow density and simultaneously have high stiffness and strength. The high porosity structures also can have air-like properties, such as low refractive index and dielectric constant, which can be used for light trapping and enhance the performance of waveguide and integrated photonics. Nanolattice structures are expected to have extremely low thermal conductivity and can be used as a lightweight thermal insulator for aerospace applications. The combination of mechanical, optical, and thermal properties allows the nanostructured materials to be used as an insulating layer in integrated circuits, multilayer photonic devices, and as thin-film coating on arbitrary surfaces. The material also may be used in multilayer coating as a high efficiency dielectric reflector that has low thermal conductivity, which may be used as a radiation shield or in cooling devices.This I-Corps project is based on the development of a lithographic nanomanufacturing process of ultraporous nanolattice materials. The proposed technology uses colloidal particles that may be harnessed to create volumetric intensity for three-dimensional (3D) patterning. Using both “top-down” lithographic and “bottom-up” self-assembly approaches, the proposed method is enabled using light scattering from self-assembled nanoparticles for volumetric exposure of a photosensitive polymer. This results in a process that is highly versatile and solely based on particle-light interactions that may be designed by controlling the light and particle parameters. In addition, in contrast to traditional techniques, the proposed technology may be low-cost and does not require extensive optical, electrical, or mechanical hardware. The proposed process also is highly scalable, and a roll-to-roll prototype system based on this technology has demonstrated continuous printing of 3D nanostructures on flexible substrate with 180 mm/min throughput. Manufacturing of nanostructures and nanodevices generally is limited by a tradeoff between pattern resolution and throughput. The proposed technology overcomes this challenge by using massively parallel colloidal elements for volumetric patterning.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.

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一种可扩展的工艺来制造具有高分辨率和吞吐量的三维纳米结构。所提出的技术可以制造出具有机械、光学和热性能优于传统块状材料的纳米结构。三维纳米结构材料和纳米晶格由于其在传统宏观尺度材料中所未观察到的物理性质，在电子、光电子和太阳能等工业中有着广泛的应用。纳米结构材料可以在具有超低密度的同时具有较高的刚度和强度。高孔隙率结构还可以具有类似空气的特性，如低折射率和介电常数，可用于光捕获和提高波导和集成光子学的性能。纳米晶格结构预计具有极低的导热性，可以用作航空航天应用的轻质隔热材料。机械、光学和热性能的结合使得纳米结构材料可以用作集成电路、多层光子器件的绝缘层，也可以用作任意表面的薄膜涂层。该材料还可用于多层涂层中，作为具有低导热性的高效介电反射器，其可用作辐射屏蔽或用于冷却装置。这个I-Corps项目是基于超多孔纳米晶格材料的光刻纳米制造工艺的发展。所提出的技术使用胶体颗粒，可用于创建三维（3D）图案的体积强度。采用“自上而下”的光刻和“自下而上”的自组装方法，该方法利用自组装纳米颗粒的光散射来实现光敏聚合物的体积曝光。这导致了一个高度通用的过程，并且完全基于可以通过控制光和粒子参数来设计的粒子-光相互作用。此外，与传统技术相比，所提出的技术可能是低成本的，并且不需要大量的光学、电气或机械硬件。所提出的工艺也具有高度可扩展性，基于该技术的卷对卷原型系统已经证明了在柔性衬底上以180 mm/min的吞吐量连续打印3D纳米结构。纳米结构和纳米器件的制造通常受到图案分辨率和吞吐量之间权衡的限制。提出的技术克服了这一挑战，通过使用大量平行胶体元素的体积图案。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。