Researchers on the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a light-based technique of printing nano-sized metal structures that’s significantly faster and cheaper than any technology currently available. It’s a scalable solution that would transform a scientific field long reliant on technologies which might be prohibitively expensive and slow. The breakthrough has the potential to bring latest technologies out of labs and into the world.
Technological advances in lots of fields depend on the power to print metallic structures which might be nano-sized — a scale tons of of times smaller than the width of a human hair. Sourabh Saha, assistant professor within the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, and Jungho Choi, a Ph.D. student in Saha’s lab, developed a method for printing metal nanostructures that’s 480 times faster and 35 times cheaper than the present conventional method.
Their research was published within the journal Advanced Materials.
Printing metal on the nanoscale — a method referred to as nanopatterning — allows for the creation of unique structures with interesting functions. It’s crucial for the event of many technologies, including electronic devices, solar energy conversion, sensors, and other systems.
It is mostly believed that high-intensity light sources are required for nanoscale printing. But one of these tool, referred to as a femtosecond laser, can cost as much as half 1,000,000 dollars and is just too expensive for many research labs and small businesses.
“As a scientific community, we haven’t got the power to make enough of those nanomaterials quickly and affordably, and that’s the reason promising technologies often stay limited to the lab and do not get translated into real-world applications,” Saha said.
“The query we desired to answer is, ‘Can we actually need a high-intensity femtosecond laser to print on the nanoscale?’ Our hypothesis was that we do not need that light source to get the style of printing we wish.”
They looked for a low-cost, low-intensity light that may very well be focused in a way much like femtosecond lasers, and selected superluminescent light emitting diodes (SLEDs) for his or her business availability. SLEDs emit light that may be a billion times less intense than that of femtosecond lasers.
Saha and Choi got down to create an original projection-style printing technology, designing a system that converts digital images into optical images and displays them on a glass surface. The system operates like digital projectors but produces images which might be more sharply focused. They leveraged the unique properties of the superluminescent light to generate sharply focused images with minimal defects.
They then developed a transparent ink solution made up of metal salt and added other chemicals to make certain the liquid could absorb light. When light from their projection system hit the answer, it caused a chemical response that converted the salt solution into metal. The metal nanoparticles stuck to the surface of the glass, and the agglomeration of the metal particles creates the nanostructures. Since it is a projection style of printing, it might print a complete structure in a single go, relatively than point by point — making it much faster.
After testing the technique, they found that projection-style nanoscale printing is feasible even with low-intensity light, but provided that the photographs are sharply focused. Saha and Choi imagine that researchers can readily replicate their work using commercially available hardware. Unlike an expensive femtosecond laser, the style of SLED that Saha and Choi utilized in their printer costs about $3,000.
“At present, only top universities have access to those expensive technologies, and even then, they’re situated in shared facilities and will not be all the time available,” Choi said. “We wish to democratize the aptitude of nanoscale 3D printing, and we hope our research opens the door for greater access to one of these process at a low price.”
The researchers say their technique can be particularly useful for people working within the fields of electronics, optics, and plasmonics, which all require a wide range of complex metallic nanostructures.
“I believe the metrics of cost and speed have been greatly undervalued within the scientific community that works on fabrication and manufacturing of tiny structures,” Saha said.
“In the true world, these metrics are essential in terms of translating discoveries from the lab to industry. Only when we now have manufacturing techniques that take these metrics under consideration will we have the option to completely leverage nanotechnology for societal profit.”
