There is an increasing interest and a strong need for nanomanufacturing technologies that are scalable both in processing area and speed. These technologies are needed to meet the growing markets in a wide range of applications from electronics to energy to biomedical. Examples include nanostructures to improve the brightness and power efficiency of flat panel displays, self-cleaning and anti-reflective surfaces for displays and photovoltaic devices, and patterned surfaces (for example, mimicking patterns on shark fins) to resist bacterial growth. Despite progress at various levels, a versatile nanofabrication technology that can meet the necessary requirements of high resolution, high fabrication speed, cost effectiveness and large area processing is lacking. This award will pave the way for future deployment of high-throughput nanopatterning for such applications for which the deep ultra-violet photolithography, used by the semiconductor industry, is too expensive to apply. This research involves several disciplines of science and engineering including nanomanufacturing, optical design, modeling and simulation, characterization and process development. These disciplines will be integrated into curriculum development and development of mini projects to give hands-on research opportunity for undergraduate and minority students.
The resolution of photolithography is limited by the light diffraction limit. To overcome this limit, the new concept of plasmonics-based lithography was introduced as early as 2004 and followed later with the approach of hyperlens by taking advantage of intrinsically small plasmon wavelength. However there have been critical challenges impeding the progress of this field. For example, the design of the appropriate structures for masks is difficult and, due to the near-field nature of the photoresist exposure, the quality of the nanostructures (shallow depth and rough patterns) is very low. The research team aims to close the knowledge gap by developing reliable mask and hyperlens designs and investigate innovative strategies to produce high quality nanoscale patterns. They will explore unique dispersions of the hyperbolic metamaterial to achieve nanoscale features with pitch much reduced from that on the photomask. The proposed techniques, when implemented with a new roller lithography approach, combines some of the best features of photolithography, soft lithography, and continuous roll-to-roll and roll-to-plate patterning technologies toward realizing complex nanostructures for practical applications.
