Researchers from Penn State University have developed a new technique called 'microdisplacement printing,' based on a well-known previous method named 'microcontact printing.' This new technique 'makes possible the highly precise placement of molecules during the fabrication of nanoscale components for electronic and sensing devices,' according to this news release. This new technology doesn't require clean rooms or expensive environments to assemble nanocomponents. And the scientists are already working on how to drive down costs for the nanofabrication of semiconductors. Read more...
Here is the introduction of the Penn State news release.
Scientists will announce next month a new technique called microdisplacement printing, which makes possible the highly precise placement of molecules during the fabrication of nanoscale components for electronic and sensing devices.
The new microdisplacement technique is based on a widely used patterning method known as microcontact printing -- a simple way of fabricating chemical patterns that does not require clean rooms and other kinds of special and expensive environments. Both methods involve "inking" a patterned rubber-like stamp with a solution of molecules, then applying the inked stamp to a surface.
Before getting further, here is a visual comparison between the two methods.
Below is a lateral force microscopy image of patterned gold made by traditional microcontact printing methods (Credit: Nano Letters).
And this one is a lateral force microscopy image of a gold sample "patterned" by microcontact printing using a polydimethylsiloxane stamp with 10 µm posts (Credit: Nano Letters).
Please read the full news release for more details, but here are the two key advantages of this new microprinting technique.
In addition to providing more control over the precision of stamped patterns, the new microdisplacement technique also relaxes the requirements in precisely positioning a series of stamps used to apply consecutive patterns with different molecular inks. "You don't have to be extremely precise about the exact placement of the stamps as long as you apply the molecular inks in order of their bonding strengths," explains Paul Weiss, professor of chemistry and physics at Penn State.
This professor is quite unusual: he also builds his own -- impressive -- microscopes.
The research was aided by the Weiss lab's unusual collection of microscopes, which enable the scientists to get a clear picture of the results of their experiments, both at the broad scale of a stamped pattern and at the narrow scale of just a single molecule. One scanning tunneling microscope that Weiss and his group designed and built themselves, for example, has 1,000 times more resolution than is needed to image an individual atom.
The research work about this new technique will soon be published by Nano Letters, but is already available online. Here is a link to this paper named "Microdisplacement Printing." The above pictures come from this supporting material (PDF format, 6 pages, 133 KB).
Sources: Pennsylvania State University news release, August 18, 2005; and other web sites
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