The ISE Department would like to congratulate Dr. Jingyan Dong and his team for having their research on ultrasonic vibration assisted nanomachining, highlighted in the June edition of Physics World Magazine. This research was also highlighted as a Lab Talk article on nanotechweb.org.
The team’s paper focuses on their use of ultrasonic vibration assisted nanomachining lithography to fabricate nano-patterns on polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) films. Traditionally in atomic force microscopy (AFM) setups, the line widths are limited by the size of the AFM tip. With the use of ultrasonic vibration that limitation has been drastically improved. Compared with mechanical scratching and dynamic ploughing, ultrasonic vibration regulated nanomachining lithography provides much faster fabrication speed and greater control of the fabricated features. Slots with dimensions spanning from tens of nanometers to hundreds of nanometers are fabricated in one scan with a lithography speed of tens of microns per second, which is significantly higher than other known mechanical modification-based nanolithography methods.
The nanomachining and testing using AFM were carried out by our very own Li Zhang, a Ph.D. student here in the ISE Department, who is currently working on the modeling and application of tip-based nanofabrication. Again, congratulations to Dr. Jingyan and his team for their continued hard work and receiving this recognition.