The proposed work will solve a fundamental manufacturing issue: the inability to directly pattern metal with sub-100nm resolution. Addressing the nanopatterning of silver, which finds application in photonics and electronics, it develops a novel solid-liquid electrochemical process capable of large-area, low-cost and high fidelity patterning. In addition to deriving a fundamental physical understanding of transport of metallic ion species across multi-phase domains such as ionic glass-liquid electrolyte systems, the proposed research will exploit high speed, continuous, direct nanoscale patterning of metallic substrates to generate high performance biosensors.
If successful, the proposed research will provide the manufacturing community with a valuable new technology. The obtained knowledge of the physical, chemical, and transport properties of silver-based solid electrolyte material systems can be used in the design and industrial-scale manufacturing of optical biosensors. In addition, the understanding developed in this research can be translated to other similar systems, such as liquid junction photovoltaic devices and lithium ion batteries with nanostructured anodes thus inspiring similar systems to be studied and developed for a range of applications including renewable energy conversion and new sensor designs.
