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

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，以制造高分辨率和高产量的三维纳米结构。这项拟议的技术可能会创造出具有优于传统块状材料的机械、光学和热学性能的纳米结构。三维纳米结构材料和纳米晶格由于具有传统宏观尺度材料所不具备的物理性质，在电子、光电子、太阳能等行业有着广泛的应用。纳米结构材料可以具有超低密度，同时具有高的刚度和强度。这种高孔隙率结构还可以具有类似空气的性质，如低折射率和介电常数，可以用于光捕获，提高光波导和集成光子学的性能。纳米晶格结构有望具有极低的导热系数，可用作航空航天领域的轻质绝热材料。机械、光学和热性能的结合使纳米材料可以用作集成电路、多层光子器件的绝缘层，以及作为任意表面的薄膜涂层。该材料还可用于多层涂层，作为具有低导热系数的高效介质反射器，可用作辐射屏蔽或冷却设备。该I-Corps项目基于超多孔纳米晶格材料的平版纳米制造工艺的开发。这项拟议的技术使用胶体颗粒，可以利用这些胶体颗粒来创建三维(3D)图案的体积强度。使用“自上而下”的光刻和“自下而上”的自组装方法，所提出的方法是利用自组装纳米粒子的光散射来体积曝光光敏聚合物。这导致了一种通用性很强的过程，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，建议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。该工艺也具有很高的可扩展性，基于该技术的卷到卷原型系统已经展示了以180 mm/min的吞吐量在柔性基板上连续打印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产量之间的折衷的限制。建议的技术克服了这一挑战，使用大量平行的胶体元素进行体积图案。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.