EdEarl Posted July 29, 2013 Posted July 29, 2013 “With this breakthrough, we can construct very high-quality materials and devices, such as processing semiconductors over large areas, and we can do it with an instrument slightly larger than a printer,” said Chad A. Mirkin, senior author of the study and a world-renowned pioneer in the field of nanoscience. The nanofabrication tool allows one to rapidly process substrates coated with photosensitive materials called resists and generate structures that span the macro-, micro- and nanoscales, all in one experiment. In the paper, Mirkin explains how his lab produced a map of the world, with nanoscale resolution that is large enough to see with the naked eye, a feat never before achieved with a scanning probe instrument. Not only that, but closer inspection with a microscope reveals that this image is actually a mosaic of individual chemical formulae made up of nanoscale points. Making this pattern showcases the instrument’s capability of simultaneously writing centimeter-scale patterns with nanoscale resolution. The Nature Communications paper is titled “Desktop nanofabrication with massively multiplexed beam-pen lithography.” In addition to Mirkin, other authors are Xing Liao, Keith A. Brown, Abrin L. Schmucker, Guoliang Liu and Shu He, all of Northwestern University. See: http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2013/07/desktop-printing-at-the-nano-level.html This process seems to promise nanofabrication in graduate labs, businesses and perhaps homes (e.g., "you can begin to build devices ... right at the point of use"). Although, if it can make drugs, it will not become a personal product in the near future. But, combined with 3D and 4D printing it might change the meaning of on demand production and the way some mass marketed products are produced and distributed, especially things made from organic compounds (e.g., "gene chips" and "protein arrays"). Although, the article does mention making "electronic circuits", it did not specify the material from which they could be made.
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