Ahmed Busnaina, Northeastern University, Boston, MA and Nano OPS, Inc., Newton, MA
We introduce a new additive manufacturing technology for making nanoelectronics that is estimated to cost one to two orders of magnitude less than the current conventional semiconductor manufacturing. This is largely accomplished by reducing the initial cost of infrastructures but also by drastically cutting the operating cost by significantly reducing the power requirement and very little water or chemicals use. This new disruptive technology will enable the fabrication of nanoelectronics while reducing the cost by 10-100 times and allowing device designers the use of any organic or inorganic semiconducting, conductive or insulating material on flexible or rigid substrates. This will allow industry to leverage novel properties of nanomaterials such as two-dimensional (2D) materials, quantum dots, nanotubes, etc. The new technology is enabled by directed assembly-based nanoscale printing at ambient temperature and pressure and can print 1000 faster and 1000 smaller (down to 20nm) structures than ink-jet based printing. The nanoscale printing platform enables the heterogeneous integration of interconnected circuit layers (like CMOS) of printed electronics and sensors at ambient temperature and pressure. The directed assembly-based printing processes were specifically created to be scalable, sustainable and designed to enable precise and repeatable control of assembly of various nanomaterials at high-rate. The new technology has demonstrated the printing of several devices including transistors, inverters, diodes, chemical and biosensors, and interconnects using a variety of nanomaterials at the nano and microscale.