CAREER: Scalable Lamination Printing of Near Atomically Thin Electronic Materials with Mechanical Stretchability

The University Of Central Florida Board Of Trustees, Orlando FL

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will support research to create new fundamental knowledge that enables the scalable manufacturing of atomically thin and mechanically stretchable electronic materials, promoting the progress of science as well as advancing national prosperity. Conventional electronic devices are unable to operate in mechanically stretchable forms, limited by the physical rigidness and bulkiness of their constituting materials. Two-dimensional (2D) layered electronic materials hold promise in this respect owing to their extremely small thickness and large stretch limits. Manufacturing strategies to reliably integrate them into desired device platforms maintaining their structural quality are developed under this grant. This research will investigate manufacturing methods to precisely delaminate, print, and assemble 2D materials of various kinds in any physical forms toward their scaled-up heterogeneous integrations. The manufacturing methods should be extendable to many materials of the growing family of two-dimensional materials allowing for their device incorporation. Technological opportunities in the field of stretchable electronics can impact a wide range of applications such as healthcare, medical, and opto-electrical sensors. This research can have a broad impact on semiconductor manufacturing and electronics industries, strengthening the nation’s competitiveness in these important domains. The interdisciplinary nature of the integrated research and educational programs envisioned in this project will promote the participation of undergrad and underrepresented students of diverse backgrounds. Conventional manufacturing methods to prepare for thin electronic materials such as silicon in mechanically deformable forms have demanded equipment-intensive and costly lithographic patterning and etching processes. The thickness of the currently employed materials does not allow for the defect-free mechanical stretchability. Intrinsically extensible 2D layered materials suffer from adhesion instability which makes their system integration difficult. This research is to fill this knowledge gap by investigating the fundamental mechanism for the capillary-force driven delamination and lamination of 2D materials. The underlying thermodynamic energy principles will be studied that govern the van der Waals adhesion of various 2D materials with respect to their growth wafers and will establish their structure-process-property relationships through experimental and computational approaches. Finite element mechanics modeling, in-situ electrical and structural characterizations, as well chemical vapor deposition growth will be studied to develop the understanding and capabilities of the manufacturing process. The lamination technique will be used to print and assemble wafer-scale 2D materials onto substrates in a deterministic manner and study their strain-invariant electrical properties. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.