(Invited) Nanopatterning Functional Metal Oxide Nanostructures By Vapor-Phase Infiltration in Polymer Templates

Abstract

Infiltration synthesis is a process technique derived from atomic layer deposition (ALD), where polymeric templates, such as those lithographically patterned and self-assembled, are infiltrated by vapor-phase inorganic precursors to form novel organic-inorganic hybrids with enhanced materials properties. These hybrids can be further transformed by selectively removing the organic matrix to finally form metal oxide nanostructures with morphology and positional registry as dictated and designed by the starting polymer templates. In this talk, I will highlight a few examples of our recent efforts to generate functional inorganic nanostructures by using infiltration synthesis including, patterning arbitrary metal oxide nanostructures with sub-40 nm linewidth and over 15 aspect ratio, structural characteristics extremely difficult to achieve by conventional microfabrication techniques; fully CMOS compatible, wafer-scale synthesis and integration of in-plane aligned ZnO nanowire array phototransistors; and three-dimensional (3D) ZnO nanomesh structures derived from self-assembled block copolymer (BCP) templates with layer-number-dependent percolative electrical conductance.