A 4D Nanoprinter for Making and Manipulating Macroscopic Materials
Abstract
Multi-functional 3D nanostructures have attracted significant attention in recent years due to their potential impact on fields ranging from artificial tissues, and biosensors, to metamaterials. However, to realize their full potential, new chemistries and tools for fabricating both hard and soft functional materials with nanoscale resolution are required. While current printing tools are well established for fabricating 2D hard materials, they are often materials limited, have poor resolution, or are low in throughput. We hypothesize that cantilever-free scanning probe lithography (CF-SPL), specifically polymer pen lithography (PPL) and beam pen lithography (BPL), are uniquely positioned to address these challenges and will enable the printing of functional 3D (or 4D) structures. PPL and BPL both use an array of millions pyramidal pens to deliver inks or perform localized reactions resulting in the patterning of nanostructures across cmscale areas. Using the PPL and BPL platforms, we proposed to develop innovative ink chemistries and printing methods towards the goal of building a 4D nano printer, which has enabled the creation of functional 3D architectures that can be applied in electronics, adaptive optical materials, and biological studies.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 30, 2022
- Accession Number
- AD1230133
Entities
People
- Chad Mirkin
Organizations
- Northwestern University