A Platform Technology for High-throughput Atomically Precise Manufacturing: Mechatronics at the Atomic Scale

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The main objective of this project is to invent the necessary enabling technologies for high-throughput atomically precise manufacturing (APM). APM is an emerging technology that refers to any manufacturing capability that enables fabrication of atomically precise structures, components, and devices under programmable control. APM will require positional assembly at the atomic and/or molecular scale, as well as at the nano and microscales using hierarchical assembly to create products ranging from nanoscale and quantum devices to macroscale systems and materials. This project builds on the expectation that commercial viability of APM will depend on a high level of parallelism to achieve the required throughput, a capability that currently does not exist. This project is the first attempt to address this key technological bottleneck. Numerous benefits are expected to emerge from this technology. For example, atomically Precise nanoimprint templates produced with the highly parallel on scanning tunneling microscope (STM) lithography, that we aim to design, could be used in roll-to-roll manufacturing to produce membrane filters that would enable the energy saving separation, in a cost-effective manner. Furthermore, this high parallelism will enable APM to impact a wide variety of technologies with important implications on materials for energy efficiency. An important application for APM is fabrication in fabrication of solid-state quantum computers. The most scalable approach to Quantum Computing is based on embedding single donor qubits in Si. This technology depends heavily on STM lithography. In this method the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) is used to inject electrons into surface Si-H chemical bonds, causing them to break. This process allows single hydrogen atoms to be removed from a hydrogen passivated silicon surface. By scanning the tip across the surface at suitable voltage and current conditions, lines of hydrogen atoms can be removed, creating patterns of exposed silicon dangling bonds, which are more reactive to many species than the hydrogen-terminated silicon atoms, thus producing chemical contrast. Due to this strong chemical contrast, many different species prefer to adsorb into the patterned areas and do not stick onto the hydrogen-terminated background. This property is then used to replace H vacancies with dopant atoms, like phosphorous. A highly parallel HDL system will enable production of quantum computers with large number of qubits, in contrast to one, or two-qubit devices already demonstrated. More generally, the same dopant placement capability enables the fabrication of a variety of Quantum devices and 2D Quantum Metamaterials. Quantum devices require only microscopic quantities of atomically precise materials and yet will enable fundamental research to understand, predict, and ultimately control matter and energy at the electronic, atomic, and molecular levels. This capability is fully aligned with the FY 2018 BES priorities to transform the understanding and control of matter and energy including emphasis on emerging high priorities in quantum materials and chemistry, catalysis science, and synthesis.