FMRG: Cyber: Manufacturing USA: Cyber-Enabled, High-Throughput Manufacturing of Multi-Material, 3D Nanostructures

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

High-speed, nanoscale 3D printing has the potential to transform manufacturing and enable the fabrication of many products that are currently infeasible to produce. Unfortunately, contemporary 3D printing techniques fall well short of the throughput, resolution, and yield requirements of many potential applications. This grant will support research to develop a novel nanoscale 3D printing technique that will revolutionize our ability to manufacture products such as water filtration membranes that require precise, multi-material 3D nanostructures. Compared with state-of-the-art micro/nanoscale 3D printing, we expect this work to increase the spatial resolution by over an order of magnitude and the throughput by five orders of magnitude by allowing volumetric nanostructures to be fabricated from multiple materials simultaneously. The new water filtration membranes enabled by this nanoscale 3D printing process will improve the tradeoff between selectivity and permeability in water filtration by an estimated factor of 10x while reducing membrane costs by a factor of 100x. These improvements will result in an overall cost reduction in ultrafiltration of up to 25%, potentially save billions of dollars per year. This project will also enhance workforce development by: (1) creating a new NanoEngineering certificate program to rapidly train workers for the semiconductor industry, (2) developing a new NanoEngineering Master’s program, (3) leveraging the Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) program to bring the “learning labs” to schools with large underrepresented-minority populations, and (4) working with industrial partners to create internships opportunities for students. In traditional approaches to nanoscale 3D printing, improvements in resolution, precision, and throughput often conflict. The nanoscale 3D printing process developed under this grant will end these tradeoffs by using sub-wavelength-patterned metamasks to create near-field multi-colored holographic patterns in new multi-wavelength photocurable resists to allow entire multi-material 3D structures to be patterned with sub-diffraction resolution in a single light exposure. Cyber-data analytics will be used to create feedback loops for both individual sub-processes and the overall mask and materials designs. Smart sampling of these 3D nanostructures using novel metrology tools will be combined with machine learning and physics-based models to create a hybrid framework to test the fundamental limits of nanoscale 3D printing. Expected outcomes of this work include: (1) new methods for creating near-field metamasks for multi-wavelength 3D nanopatterning, (2) new resist chemistries enabling multi-wavelength, multi-material patterning, (3) new understanding of the physics that limit resolution, throughput, material properties, and yield in nanoscale 3D printing, (4) new high-speed, data-enabled hybrid metrology approaches for measuring nanoscale 3D features in real time, and (5) new hybrid control techniques that use metrology data and physics-based models to intelligently enhance yield. This Future Manufacturing research is supported by the Divisions of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (ENG/CMMI), Chemistry (MPS/CHE), and Engineering Education and Centers (ENG/EEC). 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.