EPSRC Fellowships in Manufacturing: Additive nanomanufacturing via probe-based pick-and-place nanoparticle assembly

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The United Nations University in Tokyo estimates that an average 2g silicon chip costs 1.6kg of fossil fuel, 73g of chemicals and 32 kg of water. This is primarily because the nanomanufacturing technology used thus far is a layer-by-layer additive and subtractive process. Innovations thus far in nanomanufacturing have focused mostly on reducing feature sizes, which have now reached remarkably small dimensions; further scaling will not necessarily deliver increased performance. This opens up the possibility of updating existing electronics, as functionality rather than scaling (or the feature size node) is the main driver. Meanwhile in academia, considerable research into self-assembly of nanoscale particles has also been of interest. These techniques have been very important in understanding how to use chemistry to make particles arrange themselves in pre-determined patterns. In this fellowship, I intend to advance these developments towards a directed, additive nanomanufacturing technique using nanoscale probes to pick and place nanoparticles. The proposed research aims to have nanoscale robotic arms picking and placing nanoparticles to manufacture new devices with increased functionality, update nanoscale devices and to reduce the subtractive waste generated in nanomanufacturing.