NU 2010-046

Inventors
Mark Huntington
Min Hyung Lee
Teri Odom*
Wei Zhou

Abstract
Molding at the nanoscale has driven the production of high-density optical and magnetic storage media, organic light-emitting diodes, polymer photovoltaic cells, and field-effect transistors. While rigid molds may be used to imprint soft and semi-hard materials for these applications, they are quite expensive to fabricate and brittle at nanoscale dimensions. Additionally, current molding methods require the use of a different master for each pattern that is desired, leading to significantly higher costs and increased down-time. To address this, researchers at Northwestern University have developed an all-moldable, bench-top soft nanofabrication platform that can generate nanoscale patterns with programmable densities and fill factors from a single master. This new method, Solvent-Assisted Nanoscale Embossing (SANE), combines the strengths of serial fabrication techniques with those of parallel ones, in turn enabling unprecedented opportunities to manipulate the properties of nanoscale materials.

Applications

• Nanoscale device fabrication and design
• Efficient creation of new molds for nanoscale patterning

Advantages

• Cost effective
• Scalable to large‚Äìarea applications
• Exceptional density and feature size control

Publication
M.H. Lee, M.D. Huntington, W. Zhou, J.-C. Yang, T.W. Odom (2011) Programmable Soft Lithography: Solvent-assisted Nanoscale Embossing. Nano Letters. 11, 311.

IP Status
Issued US Patent No. 9,168, 679