Nanofabrications for Information Technology
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0961-O06-04
Nanofabrications for Information Technology Kyung Choi Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ, 07974 Molecularly designed functional polymers have been synthesized for functional nano- or microfabrications. We designed and synthesized a new class of poly(dimethyl)siloxane stamps to transfer small features from the original masters to a variety of substrates. The new PDMS stamps were used for soft lithography to overcome the limitations of current soft lithography and thus to extend this technology to advanced levels. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) were also synthesized to integrate functional patterns for fabricating novel sensors.
INTRODUCTION In nanotechnology, a lot of studies to find out about new materials and novel fabricating processes have been done to develop smaller and more compact devices. Advances in nanofabrications have also gotten a great attention to produce active devices with high performances. There are many challenges in nanotechnology for chemists to contribute in this area by designing and synthesizing new materials; because, nanotechnology is a part of the chemical domain, which brings novel materials at the molecular level for nanotechnology purposes.1-9 However, conventional synthetic approaches often limit to produce advanced materials for nanotechnology purposes. Since chemists have been seeking for advanced nanofabrications by developing materials, molecular designs for nanofabrications became a key contributor to satisfy our growing demands on miniaturizations. Due to stringent needs for high fidelity in nanofabrications, intensive efforts on the synthesis of new materials and novel fabrication techniques currently lead this technology. To satisfy our desires and thus overcome the limitations of conventional materials, chemists and materials scientists have been working for creating novel molecular structures. Since integration of nanopatterns on plastic/flexible substrates enables active devices that combine the diversity of organic materials with specific optoelectronic properties, device functions rely on optimizing materials. Soft lithography technique has been widely used in replicating and fabricating small features. It is a low cost alternative to photolithography by generating features from masters to substrates using ‘elastomeric materials’, such as stretchable silicon elastomers. This technique significantly relies on the performance of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) stamp materials.
However, commercial PDMS stamps have shown limitations, especially at the nanoscales due to their low physical toughness and high thermal expansion coefficients, which makes us to be difficult to fabricate small patterns. To achieve high performances in molding and printing processes, we designed and synthesized a new version of stiffer, photocured PDMS silicon elastomers, which was developed specifically for nanoscale resolution soft lithography. We demonstrated its unique capabilities in submicron-scale soft lithography, which is often limited in its use with other commercially available
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