Invited Renewal Proposal: EPSRC Fellowships in Manufacturing: Additive nanomanufacturing techniques for integrated device fabrication

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The United Nations University in Tokyo has estimated that an average 2 g silicon chip utilizes 1.6 kg of fossil fuels, 73 g of chemicals and 32 kg of water. This kind of waste is unprecedented in heavy manufacturing. For example, in car manufacturing the ratio of finished goods to waste is roughly equal. This is primarily because the nanomanufacturing technology used thus far is a layer-by-layer additive and subtractive process. As dimensions become increasingly small, the additive layers are increasingly smaller. Hence more subtractive waste is generated (as efficiencies are not one-to-one with further size scaling). Innovations thus far in nanomanufacturing have focused mostly on reducing feature sizes, which have now reached remarkably small dimensions, where further scaling will not 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. With the renewal of this fellowship, I intend to advance developments during the last four years, not only within my group, but worldwide, towards integration of two or more additive nanomanufacturing processes to create functional devices. This research is supported substantially by industrial partners, to the tune of £339,700, underlining the significance of the research in industry.