Nanotechnology

Week 5 - Silicon and other Nanofabrication techniques

In this unit we will look at Silicon technology and Moore's Law. Introduces the more fabrication techniques used in nanotechnology, focusing on semiconductors and nanoelectronics, MEMS, high performance materials (graphite, polymers and plastics, metals and alloys) and new applications of glasses, especially spin coat materials. In this unit we will look at the major techniques used in nanotechnology. These include thin film deposition, silicon processing, self assembly (bottom up), protein and DNA templating, STM-AFM atom-by-atom assembly, and a virtual tour of Stanford Nanofabrication Facility (SNF).

Thin film deposition
Silicon processing
Stanford Nanofabrication Facility
Self-assembly (bottom up)
NASA work with protein assembly
DNA arrays and templating
STM - AFM atom by atom assembly

Websites and supporting materials for this week:

Thin film deposition - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_film_deposition
IC industry - http://www.icknowledge.com/index.html
Silicon processing - http://www.genus.com/investor/primer.html
Self-assembly - http://logistics.about.com/cs/selfassembly/index.htm
Molecular self-assembly - http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/hardware/story/0,10801,104335,00.html?source=x488
DNA arrays and templating - (ScienceMag September 2003 link)
Electronic nanostructures templated on self-assembled DNA scaffolds (Nanotechnology 15 (2004) S525–S527 link)
Tour of Stanford Nanofabrication Facility - http://snf.stanford.edu/

Learning outcomes for this week:

What are nanofabrication techniques?
1. Silicon processing
2. Thin film deposition
3. Polymer techniques
Compare and contrast 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' approaches to fabrication
What is self-assembly?
1. Atomic and molecular
2. Biological
3. Nanofabrication
Where is nano-bio self assembly being used?
1. Protein self-assembly
2. DNA templating
Describe how AFM is used for atomic / molecular assembly and nanofabrication