High Throughput Magnetic Optical Nano-Milling of Thin Layer Materials with Designed Nano-Chisels

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

High throughput large scale nanomachining of sub-100nm nanostructure has lots of applications in electronics, environmental, energy, medical devices, and optical industries (e.g. membranes in drug delivery, ultrafiltration for separations technologies, nanofluidic devices for the separation of biomolecules, substrates for solid oxide fuel cells). There is an increasing demand for technologies capable of patterning surfaces at the nanoscale with high precision, high throughput, and in a cost effective manner. Currently, the desired nanoscale patterning accuracy can be achieved using electron-beam lithography (EBL), focused ion-beam (FIB) lithography, tip enhanced scanning probe microscopy (SPM), and optical nanolithography. These methods usually suffer from being slow, small area and low throughput. The resolution of laser machining is limited by diffraction and the wavelength of lasers. This award supports scientific investigations on a new nanomachining technique to generate ultra-fine nanohole arrays in various thin materials with high throughput. This project will advance fundamental nanomachining technology by bringing hybrid energy field into laser materials processing, and breaking the barrier of large scale laser micromachining from the diffraction limit of laser wavelength. The results from this research can realize on-demand nanomachining in many materials with high efficiency, product quality, tunability, and flexibility that is considered impossible before. The PI is involved in the RUE and RET program, is committed to involving women and underrepresented minorities in research activities, and will leverage a Purdue program to expose high school instructors to his research. The proposed project will benefit many research areas such as electromagnetism, plasmonics and machining. This projects aims to develop on a novel hybrid nanomachining process, namely magnetic-optical-nano-milling, to produce large area nanochannel arrays in thin layer substrates. The research objective is to quantitatively understand the relationship between process parameters and associated physical mechanisms in magnetic-optical-nano-milling and determine processing conditions for desired patterns in various thin film substrates. Specifically, this project will formulate a physics-based computational model for magnetic-optical-nano-milling, which will delineate the laser-nanoparticle-substrate interaction during the hybrid machining process and predict the important physical phenomena such as milling speed, photothermal induced phase change, laser energy transportation. The project will verify the developed model through experimental measurements of important parameters in magnetic-optical-nano-milling of polymer membrane. The effects of various processing conditions on the temperature distribution, nano-milling rate and profile of nanoholes will be studied. The interplay between the thin film substrates and nanoparticles during the process will also be investigated. This project will promote research and education opportunities for high school teachers, graduate and undergraduates, under-represented groups in Indiana. The research outcomes will be integrated into undergraduate/graduate course development, and contributed to nanoHUB by launching research and learning codes resulted from this project online with full documentation and tutorials.