Nanocrystal/Polymer Hybrid Building Blocks for Nanofabrication

在各种尺寸、形状和组成不同的纳米材料的合成和表征方面取得了很大的进展。然而，由于缺乏可靠和经济有效的手段将纳米材料图案化或组装成适合于设备和功能系统的结构，因此在应用中存在显著的瓶颈。这里提出的计划旨在开发能够促进纳米晶体加工的混合材料，特别是使它们与现成的微加工技术兼容。这里考虑的杂化材料将由包裹在单分散聚合物胶体中的无机纳米晶组成。这种结合提供了一个诱人的机会，将纳米材料的独特性质与聚合物的可加工性结合起来，为包含可调纳米结构的设备和系统的制造和制造打开了无数的可能性。我们将考察与现有微制造工艺的兼容性，以构建有组织的纳米晶体阵列。这里考虑的混合构建块可以将纳米材料集成到目前采用的自上而下的制造和处理方法中，潜在地加速实现电子和光子学等领域的众多应用。包括化学合成、微制造、显微镜和光学和电学表征在内的多学科方法是这项研究的核心，并提供了一个重要的教育组成部分。这里要解决的多方面挑战将为新兴跨学科领域的研究人员提供大量所需的教育机会。在这个研究计划中要探索的关于纳米材料的不同主题也将作为本科生和研究生课程的几个主题的基础。

Much progress has been made in the synthesis and characterization of a variety of nanoscale materials with varying size, shape and composition. However, a significant bottleneck exists in applications due to the lack of reliable and cost-effective means of patterning or assembling nanoscale materials into structures suitable for devices and functional systems. The program proposed here aims to develop hybrid materials that can facilitate processing of nanocrystals especially to make them compatible with readily available microfabrication techniques. The hybrid materials considered here will consist of inorganic nanocrystals encapsulated in monodisperse polymer colloids. This combination provides an attractive opportunity to merge unique properties of nanoscale materials with the processibility of polymers opening up numerous possibilities in fabrication and manufacturing of devices and systems containing tunable nanostructures. Compatibility with readily available microfabrication processes to build organized nanocrystal arrays will be examined.Hybrid building blocks considered here can integrate nanoscale materials into currently employed top-down approaches to fabrication and processing, potentially expediting the realization of numerous applications in areas such as electronics and photonics. The multidisciplinary approach including chemical synthesis, microfabrication, microscopy and optical and electrical characterization is central to this research and provides an important educational component. Multifaceted challenges to be tackled here will provide ample educational opportunities needed for researchers in emerging cross-disciplinary fields. Diverse topics on nanoscale materials to be explored in this research program will also serve as a basis for several topics for undergraduate and graduate courses.