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INDUSTRY RESEARCH


Revolutionising consumer


electronics with nanotechnology


Nanopatterning, or self-assembling molecular materials, form an organised lithographic pattern on semiconductor crystals, for use as integrated circuits. Now newly developed materials, when integrated into electronics, will enable the development of ultra-lightweight, compact and efficient devices.


UNIVERSITY OF AKRON (UA) researchers have developed new materials that function on the nanoscale, which could lead to the creation of lighter laptops, slimmer televisions and crisper smartphone visual displays.


Known as “giant surfactants” - or surface films and liquid solutions - the researchers, led by Stephen Z.D. Cheng, dean of UA’s College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering used a technique known as nanopatterning to combine functioning molecular nanoparticles with polymers to build these novel materials. Surfactants are compounds that lower the surface tension (or interfacial tension) between two liquids or between a liquid and a solid. Surfactants may act in a number of ways - as detergents, wetting agents, emulsifiers, foaming agents, or dispersants, to name a few.


The giant surfactants developed at UA are large, similar to macromolecules, yet they function like molecular surfactants on a nanoscale, Cheng says.


The outcome? Nanostructures that guide the size of electronic products.


16 www.siliconsemiconductor.net Issue IV 2013


Nanopatterning, or self-assembling molecular materials, is the genius behind the small, light and fast world of modern-day gadgetry, and now it has advanced one giant step thanks to the UA researchers who say these new materials, when integrated into electronics, will enable the development of ultra-lightweight, compact and efficient devices because of their unique structures.


During their self-assembly, molecules form an organised lithographic pattern on semiconductor crystals, for use as integrated circuits. Cheng explains that these self-assembling materials differ from common block copolymers (a portion of a macromolecule, comprising many units, that has at least one feature which is not present in the adjacent portions) because they organise themselves in a controllable manner at the molecular level.


“The IT industry wants microchips that are as small as possible so that they can manufacture smaller and faster devices,” says Cheng, who also serves as the R.C. Musson and Trustees Professor of Polymer Science at UA. He points out that the current technique can produce the spacing of 22 nm only, and


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