Mechanical nanolithography without solvents - a step towards sustainable nanomanufacturing
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Materials
Abstract
In the post-Moore's law era, innovative new technologies to accelerate scientific computing and memory devices are growing explosively, amongst which photonic memory devices have been attracting a great amount of interest and hold future promise for built-in, non-volatile memory with high density, fast switching, multifunctionality, low-energy consumption, and multilevel data storage compared to electronic memory devices. It is now timely to ensure that these new device concepts are developed alongside new sustainable processes - as it is in the introduction stage of new products that manufacturing processes can also be changed.
Current manufacturing of high-resolution semiconductor devices primarily relies on photolithography as the patterning technique of choice. During the fabrication of these resist-based lithography techniques, development and lift-off steps utilize alkaline solutions and organic solvents as developers and removers. These are two of the main sources of hazardous chemical wastes . The US Environmental Protection Agency developed a waste management hierarchy, which states that the most preferred approach is source reduction and reuse, followed by recycling, energy recovery, treatment and disposal. Therefore, the development of a water-based manufacturing technique which limits the amount of hazardous chemicals at the source is essential to the minimization of chemical wastes. This will lead to higher resource efficiency and more efficient recycling and recovery of processing waste.
That is precisely what this proposal will target. The vision is to develop facile, inexpensive, scalable solvent-free lithography for nanomanufacturing, which eliminates solvents in as many lithography processes as possible but doing this in a reliable and functionally enabling manner.
Current manufacturing of high-resolution semiconductor devices primarily relies on photolithography as the patterning technique of choice. During the fabrication of these resist-based lithography techniques, development and lift-off steps utilize alkaline solutions and organic solvents as developers and removers. These are two of the main sources of hazardous chemical wastes . The US Environmental Protection Agency developed a waste management hierarchy, which states that the most preferred approach is source reduction and reuse, followed by recycling, energy recovery, treatment and disposal. Therefore, the development of a water-based manufacturing technique which limits the amount of hazardous chemicals at the source is essential to the minimization of chemical wastes. This will lead to higher resource efficiency and more efficient recycling and recovery of processing waste.
That is precisely what this proposal will target. The vision is to develop facile, inexpensive, scalable solvent-free lithography for nanomanufacturing, which eliminates solvents in as many lithography processes as possible but doing this in a reliable and functionally enabling manner.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Harish Bhaskaran (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
| Description | 2nd Workshop on Neuromorphic Photonics and Applications |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This is the workshop that many professionals from academia and industry attend and discuss the state-of-the-art neuromorphic computing and photonic nanotechnology. This is the international workshop, so it can initiate a number of collaborative research work afterwards. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://neoterich2020.eu/2023/03/01/2nd-workshop-on-neuromorphic-photonics-and-applications/ |
| Description | Invited Seminar: IIT Bombay - Photonics and neuromorphic computing 2023 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | Lab visit & talks by IITB faculty members & graduate students on photonics and neuromorphic computing, answered questions and had discussions. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Invited Talk: European Phase-Change and Ovonic Symposium (EPCOS) 2023 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation title: Phase Change Tunable NEMS |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | http://epcos2023.artov.imm.cnr.it/programme |
| Description | Invited Talk: European Phase-Change and Ovonic Symposium (EPCOS) 2023 (Yuhan He) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Mixed-Mode Phase-Change Devices with Picojoule Switching Energy. Yuhan He |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | http://epcos2023.artov.imm.cnr.it/documents/epcos_program_2023.pdf |
| Description | Invited Talk: Microsoft Analog Optical Computing Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | An invite-only workshop: As Moore's Law is reaching its limits, the potential benefits of large-scale artificial intelligence and optimization workloads to modern society could be undermined by their sustainability - economic and environmental - when using traditional computing technologies and architectures. This has sparked a growing interest in non-traditional compute technologies such as analog and optical computing. The purpose of this workshop is to gather experts in analog and optical hardware development and practitioners and researchers from various industries who are pioneering the use of AI and optimization workloads. The workshop aims to facilitate a dialogue between technology and application experts about the role of non-traditional computing hardware in industry, and by exchanging experiences, we hope to bridge the gap between technology trends and practical applications in the post-CMOS era. Presentation Title: Integrated photonic and optoelectronic computing concepts |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/event/analog-optical-computing-workshop/ |
| Description | Invited Talk: XXII International Workshop on Physics of Semiconductor Devices 2023 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Title : Optoelectronics for AI hardware and neuromorphic processing Recent work on photonic neuromorphic computing and its interface with electronics. Using new techniques available to enable sub-wavelength light matter interactions, techniques to programme nanoscale memories electronically while reading them optically will also be discussed, setting the stage for next generation, high throughput in-memory computing paradigms. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://mems.iitm.ac.in/iwpsd2023/program |
| Description | Oral Presentation at CLEO Conference Laser Science to Photonic Applications |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Ultra-Efficient Plasmonic Phase-Change Devices on SOI Platform. Yuhan He, Nikolaos Farmakidis, Samarth Aggarwal, June Sang Lee, Mengyun Wang, Wen Zhou, and Harish Bhaskaran Small footprints and low energy consumption are the long-seeking metrics for photonic computing. Here, we combine grating structures with plasmonic nanogap devices and demonstrate less than 4pJ optical switching energy with stable multilevel performance. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| Description | Oral Presentation: SPIE APP 2023 (Guoce Yang) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Reconfigurable nonlocal metasurface based on phase change materials. Guoce Yang, Mengyun Wang, June Sang Lee, Nikolaos Farmakidis, Harish Bhaskaran Nonlocal metasurfaces, which have uniform geometric arrangements but respond to incident angles differently, are uniquely capable of processing images. Phase change materials are promising functional building blocks to make metasurfaces reconfigurable owing to the significant refractive index contrast between amorphous and crystalline states. This presentation shows a novel tunable nonlocal metasurface based on the lossless phase change material Sb2Se3. It demonstrates the integration of two on-demand switchable functions, bright field imaging and second-order spatial differential imaging, on a single device. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/PC12647/PC126470Y/Reconfigurable-n... |
| Description | Oral Presentation: SPIE Photonics West 2024 (Yi Zhang) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Bosonic control in integrated photonics. Yi Zhang, Nikolaos Farmakidis, June Sang Lee, Bowei Dong, Samarth Aggarwal, Yuhan He, Harish Bhaskaran Cascaded linear and non-linear operations form the basis for all integrated photonic applications ranging from routing to computations. Because of the weak interaction between photons, achieving substantial optical nonlinearities at low power remains challenging. In this work, we demonstrate a new photonic framework where signals carried in different wavelengths can be added and encoded in a new wavelength with low optical loss. Using this approach, we can realize highly nonlinear all-optical neurons operated fully in the near-infrared domain at low power. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://spie.org/photonics-west/presentation/Bosonic-control-in-integrated-photonics/PC12889-43?enab... |
| Description | Oral presentation MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibit (June Sang Lee) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | MRS meeting is the international conference in materials science, physics, chemistry and nanoscience which consists of various symposiums and tutorial. I have attended this conference to present my recent research in nanophotonics, and I have discussed with many experts and professionals for the state-of-the-art nanotechnology. On-Chip Wavelength-Selective and Non-Volatile Reconfigurability in a Single Photonic Element. June Sang Lee, Nikolaos Farmakidis, Samarth Aggarwal, Wen Zhou, Wolfram Pernice, Harish Bhaskaran The functionality of photonic circuits relies on their ability to process multiplexed information in wavelength, polarization and phase. While optical signals can carry such multidimensional information, independent modulation of multi-wavelength signals in a single carrier has been challenging. Here, we demonstrate independent and non-volatile modulation of wavelength-multiplexed optical signals within a single photonic element. Our chips rely on the formation of standing wave patterns in a microring resonator which can be individually addressed according to their mode number (i.e. wavelength). By combining this concept with phase-changing nanoantennas, we demonstrate for the first time non-volatile, wavelength-selective modulation. This allows realizing an on-chip, reconfigurable and multi-spectral filter operating within a single element. This novel approach provides a pathway for exploring additional degrees-of-freedom in tunable photonic networks and provides a compact photonic framework for optical storage, routing, and neuromorphic/inmemory computing. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.mrs.org/docs/default-source/meetings-events/spring-meetings/2023/s23-program-final.pdf?s... |
| Description | Oral presentation at SPIE Photonic West 2024 (Yuhan He) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Oral presentation by Yuhan He and the related abstract is published in the conference proceeding Electro-optical phase-change devices approaching single pico-joule switching. Yuhan He, Nikolaos Farmakidis, Samarth Aggarwal, June Sang Lee, Mengyun Wang, Bowei Dong, Yu Shu, Yi Zhang, Francesca Parmigiani, Harish Bhaskaran Electro-optical computing systems are promising for future energy-efficient computing, while scalable, dual electrical-optical functionality and low energy-consumption electrical-optical devices are not yet implemented on-chip. In this work, with a tailored design for better heat confinement, we implement scalable phase-change devices with dual electrical-optical functionality. They show ultralow programming energy for both electrical and optical switching in a pico-joule scale, which is orders lower than other integrated electro-optical phase change devices, multilevel switching until 20% contrast, good cyclability, and readout in both electrical and optical domains. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://spie.org/photonics-west/presentation/Electro-optical-phase-change-devices-approaching-single... |
| Description | Oxford Photonics Day 2023 Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Nearly 100 students, researchers, and professors attended this workshop, where several professional presentations and many poster exhibitions were shown, it provided a platform for the communication among a broad range of photonics research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.photonics.ox.ac.uk/event/oxford-photonics-day-2023 |
| Description | Plenary Speaker: International Conference Neuromorphic, Natural and physical 2023 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Plenary Presentation title: Higher-dimensional processing using a photonic tensor core with continuous-time data. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://nnpc-conference.com/ |
| Description | Poster presentation at MRS Fall 2023 Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Poster presented by Maxine Ong: Additive manufacturing in Flexible Photonics. Maxine Ong, yu Shu, Utku E. Ali, Max Jenkins, Peter G. Bruce, Harish Bhaskaran Research exposure to people of similar field |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.mrs.org/meetings-events/fall-meetings-exhibits/2023-mrs-fall-meeting |