IBM researchers bring printing to the nanoscale

Citation

(2008), "IBM researchers bring printing to the nanoscale", Sensor Review, Vol. 28 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/sr.2008.08728aab.001

IBM researchers bring printing to the nanoscale

IBM researchers bring printing to the nanoscale

IBM researchers in collaboration with scientists from the ETH Zurich have demonstrated a new, efficient and precise technique to print at the nanoscale. The method could advance the development of nanoscale biosensors, of lenses that can bend light inside future optical chips, and the fabrication of nanowires that might be the basis of tomorrow's computer chips.

The achievement, published in the September issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology, offers a promising and powerful new tool for use in a wide range of fields and industries such as biomedicine, electronics and IT that seek ways to exploit the often unique properties of so-called nanoparticles, i.e. particles that are smaller than 100nm.

Until now, standard top-down microfabrication techniques produce such tiny particles by in effect carving them out of a bigger piece of material. Printing, in contrast, adds ready-made nanoparticles onto a surface in a very efficient way and thus facilitates the combination of different materials such as metals, polymers, semiconductors, and oxides.

For the first time, IBM researchers have printed particles as tiny as 60nm – roughly 100 times smaller than a human red blood cell – with single- particle resolution to create nanopatterns ranging from simple lines to complex arrangements. Translating their resolution into “dots per inch” (dpi), a standard measure that defines how many individual spots of ink can be printed on a certain area, the nanoprinting method yields 100,000 dots per/in. whereas common offset printing today operates with 1,500dpi.