CAREER: Three-Dimensional Nanolithography with Inexpensive Hardware

职业：使用廉价硬件的三维纳米光刻

• 批准号: 2022818
• 负责人: Chih-Hao Chang
• 金额: $ 50万
• 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: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-01-01 至 2022-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2022818&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Three; Dimensional; Nanolithography; Inexpensive

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will pioneer a novel three-dimensional nanolithography system using light interactions with colloidal nanoparticles. The ability to create a three-dimensional object at the nanoscale has enabled unique material properties and device performances. However, almost all of the existing lithography systems are based on complicated mechanical, electronic, and optical hardware that can be prohibitively expensive. This award supports fundamental research to provide the required knowledge for three-dimensional nanolithography that is based solely on colloid-light interactions instead of current expensive lithography, hence nanolithography with inexpensive hardware. The new process focuses on colloidal nanoparticles, which will serve as elementary building blocks that can manipulate and shape light for nanoscale patterning. This system will enable scalable printing of complex three-dimensional nanostructures for needleless drug delivery, multifunctional materials, and stretchable sensors. The results of this research will find broad application in biomedical, energy, electronic, and aerospace industries that will benefit the U.S. economy and the advance its manufacturing sector. This research is interdisciplinary and will further understandings in nanotechnology, physics, materials science, and engineering. The integrated research and educational goals will greatly increase engineering education in society through direct engagement of K-12 students, teachers, parents, and the local community in nanotechnology and nanomanufacturing. This research aims to overcome the key barriers to existing 3D nanolithography systems, which can have high operating cost, limited patterning resolution, and/or low fabrication throughput. State-of-the-art direct-write approaches, such as electron-beam, focused-ion-beam, two-photon lithography, can achieve fine features and have played critical roles in laboratory device demonstrations. However, these systems require serial patterning and layer-by-layer processes that are time intensive and difficult to scale. This research diverges from the traditional hardware-intensive approaches to lithography, and replaces them with colloidal nanoparticles that are illuminated to generate a wealth of near-field optical nanopatterns. By tailoring the light properties and particle parameters, such interactions will be harnessed as a novel mechanism to pattern complex 3D geometries. This approach combines the cost-effectiveness of "bottom-up" self-assembly, while retaining the user-specified pattern controllability of "top-down" lithography. The research team will perform rigorous modeling of near-field light-particle interactions to investigate the image formation mechanism, develop fabrication processes to control structure geometry and material composition, mitigate process defects and increase yield in a scale-up prototype system, and demonstrate continuous printing of complex 3D nanostructures into novel functional devices.

这种教师早期的职业发展（职业）格兰特将使用与胶体纳米颗粒的光相互作用的新颖的三维纳米光刻系统。在纳米级创建三维对象的能力已实现了独特的材料属性和设备性能。但是，几乎所有现有的光刻系统都是基于复杂的机械，电子和光学硬件，这些硬件的昂贵。该奖项支持基础研究，以提供仅基于胶体光线相互作用而不是当前昂贵的光刻的三维纳米印刷的所需知识，因此具有便宜的硬件。新的过程着重于胶体纳米颗粒，该胶质纳米颗粒将作为基本的构建块，可以操纵和塑造纳米级图案的光。该系统将对复杂的三维纳米结构进行可扩展打印，以提供无针的药物输送，多功能材料和可拉伸传感器。这项研究的结果将在生物医学，能源，电子和航空航天行业中发现广泛的应用，这些行业将使美国经济及其制造业的进步有益。这项研究是跨学科的，将进一步理解纳米技术，物理，材料科学和工程。综合研究和教育目标将通过直接在纳米技术和纳米制造业中直接参与K-12学生，老师，父母和当地社区来大大提高社会的工程教育。这项研究旨在克服现有的3D纳米光刻系统的关键障碍，该系统可能具有高运营成本，有限的模式分辨率和/或低制造吞吐量。最先进的直接作用方法，例如电子束，聚焦式梁，两光刻的光刻，可以实现出色的特征，并在实验室设备演示中起着至关重要的作用。但是，这些系统需要串行模式和逐层过程，这些过程是耗时且难以扩展的。这项研究与传统的硬件密集型方法分歧，并用胶体纳米颗粒取代它们，这些胶质纳米颗粒被照亮以产生大量的近场光学纳米图案。通过调整光特性和粒子参数，这种相互作用将被作为一种新的机制来模拟复杂的3D几何形状。这种方法结合了“自下而上”自组装的成本效益，同时保留了“自上而下”光刻的用户指定模式可控性。研究团队将对近场光粒子相互作用进行严格的建模，以研究图像形成机制，开发制造过程以控制结构几何形状和材料组成，减轻过程缺陷并增加扩大原型系统中的产量，并证明将复杂的3D纳米结构连续打印到新型功能方面。