Nanotechnology

Yes, here in the central New York (CNY) region, a lot of state-funded activity is beginning to bud, even in the middle of a New York winter. Local academics have been busy. Professor Wolf Yeigh, President of State University of New York Institute of Technology at Utica/Rome (SUNY-IT) recently commented on his team's plans for academic excellence in nanotechnology and semiconductors:

"The projected Computer Chip Commercialization Center (Quad-C) and Center for Advanced Technology (CAT) complex will be on the main campus of SUNYIT. Construction will begin this year, and we envision that the complex will be 120,000 ft² of lab and office spaces complemented by up to 30,000 ft2 of clean room for Quad-C. The academic CAT building will be around 65,000 ft2 of academic and research space. The two buildings will be connected by a rotunda collaboratorium, and the entire complex layout will be similar to what you'd see at the Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) in Albany, allowing a free flow of academic and industry R&D interaction along with the standard teaching and learning spaces.

Rather than duplicating fundamental research done at CNSE, our facility will emphasize further application and integration of nanotechnology research and development, including testing and evaluation. The academic departments at SUNYIT, working in conjunction with CNSE faculty, will offer courses and programs in nanotechnology applied to semiconductors, materials, informatics, biology and engineering (electrical, computer, civil, mechanical, bio, and materials).

Our major connectivity within the NY school system will be with CNSE. We will also work with community colleges and private institutions in the regions just as CNSE works with community colleges and institutions in the Capital Region and beyond."

The not-for-profit Mohawk Valley (MV) Edge group has been actively promoting the area as suitable for development, with control over 400 acres of land leased from NY State adjacent to the SUNY-IT facility in Marcy. Despite the fact that several years ago, the MV Edge failed in its bid to have AMD (now Global Foundries) locate their fab in Marcy, the region still stands ready to host a manufacturing facility. Already appropriately zoned and wetland permit-approved, with all new infrastructure ideal for a semiconductor fab or similar high-technology facility, the area may be ideally suited - if not for a fab - certainly for BEOL / 2.5D and 3D assembly processes, as the site is an easy drive (less than 2 hours) from the Global Foundries Saratoga Springs, and the adjacent SUNY-run CNSE facility in Albany, the New York state capital.

Local semiconductor, solar and LED-focused companies like Indium Corporation, and the first tenants in the proposed Quad-C building, Valutek and nfrastructure, will derive benefits from the close proximity of the SUNYIT facilities.

Nestled in the foothills of the Adirondack mountains (which remains the largest park in the United States), it looks like a brand new chapter may be about to be written, as the small Mohawk Valley region transforms from its old electronics moniker "RF Valley" to "Nano Valley".

Cheers!  Andy

nan·o·tech·nol·o·gy [nan-uh-tek-nol-uh-jee, ney-nuh-]
-noun
any technology on the scale of nanometers
(care of dictionary.com)

So it can be cliche to start with the definition straight from the dictionary, but the definition clearly points out the problem with the understanding of nanotechnology...there is very little.  Trying to define nanotechnology broadly is like trying to lump all items in a grocery store that are in a jar into the same aisle.  Just because pickles, peanut butter, and garlic all come in a jar doesn't mean you need to lump them in the "jar aisle". I'm not sure my stomach can handle that shopping experience. 

In a response to this kind of understanding, this week the International Organization for Standardization (ISO, you know like ISO 9000?) released a new technical report to help define and categorize nanotechnology. Instead of treating the technology as one big lump of the same material and "organizing by jars, or jarring it", it is acknowledging that all nano isn't created equal.   In the report, titled ISO/TR 11360:2010, Nanotechnologies – Methodology for the Classification and Categorization of Nanomaterials, it treats the constituents of nanotechnology as part of a family tree.  So your garlic may come in a jar all chopped up, but it is classified with the veggies and onions because it is more closely related.  In much the same way, carbon nanomaterials and gold nanoparticles are nano and "in a jar," but carbon nanomaterials are a separate class of material that can now be classified on a separate tree or "aisle."

So what do you think?  Is this a good way to classify nanotechnology?  Are you glad that ISO is getting involved in the conversation?

I caught up with Alan Rae after a recent IWLPC committee meeting, where he jokingly asked me to, “Stop asking important questions” - LOL! He was kind enough to give me a few moments of his time to share his wit and wisdom, and answer some technology questions that, yes, I thought were kind of important…

[Andy Mackie] You’re increasingly being seen as “Dr Nano” by the electronics industry – how did you arrive as the focus of so much of this technology?

[Alan Rae] At the start of my career I was in the structural ceramics business. In the days of “ceramic fever” in the 1980’s the mantra was sub-micron and monosize (monodisperse) for lower temperature processing and better properties. It worked. Then at TAM Ceramics we made “sub-micron” barium titanate and other ceramic materials but we didn’t call it nano then. When I was at Cookson Electronics in the early 2000’s we started to see nanotechnology emerging from the woodwork with people saying the same about nanomaterials for the electronics industry. Then I joined NanoDynamics in 2004 and realized the scope and potential, ranging from semiconductors to touch screens to printable electronics, to LED lighting, to solar power, to materials such as nano solders, dielectrics, conductors…the list is growing but the leitmotiv is the same – small, monosize, tightly-controlled. 

[Andy Mackie] OK, so Nanotechnology has been a buzzword for quite a while – is there a clear definition yet, and what current uses are there for nanotechnologies that may not be immediately obvious?

[Alan Rae] Well, the definition has been really tough to derive – ISO TC 229 “Nanotechnologies” came up with a definition that one dimension of a particle, needle or plate should be less than 100nm but it’s really tough to define…should all particles be less than 100 nm? 50%? Any? And should it be exactly 100nm? There are a lot of opinions. The Woodrow Wilson Institute lists over 800 consumer products containing nanomaterials on the market now – industrially the products range from semiconductors, to fillers in packaging materials and underfills, to antimicrobial and self-cleaning coatings for phones. Solar panels, especially thin film ones, depend on nanomaterials in their manufacture.

[Andy Mackie] What is in the pipeline for nanotech electronics and semiconductor interconnect materials? I know that nanosolders are starting to gain ground in some areas – what else is upcoming?

[Alan Rae] Much of the work in nano metals is being done by universities and small companies – for example my small company is working with Purdue and the Air Force to develop a novel solder technology – but commercialization will come by partnering with established companies like Indium Corporation, who have the distribution and technical support so that customers will be comfortable with a new material. Cost and reliability are king. Indium is already in the reactive nano foil business; there are existing and near-term applications for silver, silver-coated copper, alumina coated boron nitride and their combinations in adhesives, shielding materials and thermal interface materials.

[Andy Mackie] Several years ago, quantum dots were being promulgated for tunable band-gap detectors and quantum computers. How close are quantum dots to seeing real uses, and what else is on the horizon?

[Alan Rae] Quantum dots are unique and have great potential in medical imaging and as frequency shifters for LEDs. The markets haven’t developed yet because of the cost and because some of the best dots are cadmium (toxic metal) based. I’m working with a group at University of Buffalo which has a silicon quantum dot process that looks like a promising alternative. Quantum dots will have their time…but not just yet. In terms of new developments – they range from core shell and modulated structures for thermoelectric to replacing indium tin oxide with carbon nanotubes or graphene. The US National Nanotechnology Initiative tracked $1.6 billion in Government spending (check out www.nano.gov) in the last year at Universities and small businesses and NSF has set up centers of excellence at Cornell and other great universities that are really working hard to translate science into technology so we can make practical products.

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Alan, many thanks for your time, and for sharing your insights with us.

Cheers!  Andy

Tommy: NanoFoil...it's kind of like aluminum foil in thickness and look, but a little stiffer and when you put energy into it, like a spark, it heats to 1500 degrees Celsius (which is hotter than lava in a volcano) for less than a millisecond!

My engineering and non-engineering friends display puzzled looks, you know the ones you get when you start explaining that your favorite sport is water polo and it has nothing to do with horses...ok the look you have right now

Engineering Friend: Umm so what can I blow up with it?

Non-Engineering Friend: So wait, if it's that fast and that hot, I bet you could make really fast grilled cheese. Have you called Healthy Choice yet?

Good Grief!

Al + Ni -> AlNi  (You didn't know there'd be chemistry involved did you?)

I just sat down to talk to Tommy Acchione (pronounced “akki-OWN”) Applications Engineer with Indium Corporation’s  new product line, Reactive NanoTechnologies’ (RNT) NanoFoil^®, about the technology, and its offerings into the semiconductor, power semiconductor assembly, LED and display assembly industries.

[ACM] First of all: welcome to Indium Corporation! Can you tell us, in just a few words, what the basis of the RNT Technology is?

[Tommy Acchione] NanoFoil^® technology is a thin metal sheet (“foil”) made up from alternating ultrathin layers of aluminum and nickel (Al and Ni). The reaction between these two metals is stoichiometrically very simple:

            Al+2Ni -> AlNi₂

And extremely exothermic (heat-generating). This reaction (see picture) is started by a very localized heat or other high-energy source, such as a 9V battery or even a laser beam. For a fraction of a second, the alternating thousands of sandwiched layers reach temperatures as high as 2000degC, and this isotropic heatwave radiates away from the initial hot-spot through the foil at speeds of about 5-8meters/second.

Just banging two lumps of Ni and Al together will never initiate a reaction this intense, as the two large pieces of metal act as very effective heat sinks, but by layering the metals together, the heat-generating reaction propagates by allowing the adjacent layers of Ni and Al to rapidly interdiffuse, so giving out more heat, causing the nearby layers of Ni and Al to interdiffuse and so on.

[ACM] How are these materials manufactured?

[Tommy Acchione] First, we pull a high vacuum, equivalent to those vacuums found in outer space, then we sequentially deposit the alternating layers by a sputtering process onto a specially-made metal block.

For a bonding material, a layer of a specialized brazing material is initially deposited onto the metal block, then the Al and Ni are put down, then a final capping layer of braze is deposited. The initial brazing layer both enhances subsequent bonding and also helps with easy removal from the surface of the metal block.

[ACM] I understand that the uses of these materials are expanding all the time. Can you give some examples that you can talk about?

Well, as you know we have about 30 patents on this technology and 35 outstanding patent applications, but I still have to be careful talking about newer applications, which are emerging all the time.

The biggest uses are in sputtering target manufacture (which is a little ironic, since that is how they are made!); Component mounting; and what we can call “reaction initiation”, or “energetics” - things requiring an instantaneous heat-source.

Sputtering Targets: For sputtering targets of non-refractory metals, standard indium or diffusion may be the preferred method. For most refractory metals and ceramics, solder wetting and CTE mismatches make bonding with standard processes difficult. NanoFoil^® allows for these materials to be bonded at room temperature, thus removing any CTE mismatches during bonding or subsequent cooling processes.

However, as targets get larger for flat panel displays (and we are seeing needs for up to 3m x .4m targets with higher generation depositing), indium starts to become too weak to take the weight of the indium-tin oxide (ITO or InTO) target itself, and only the strength of a NanoBond^® is sufficient to hold the target in place. Another key factor is that a manual bond of a large target to its backing plate starts to become simply physically unwieldy for an operator, as its size and weight increase. NanoFoil^® becomes the elegant and simple solution here.

Component Bonding: One major market that we are seeing is in component bonding. I can’t talk too much about this, but for high-brightness LED’s (HB-LED’s) and photovoltaic concentrators (CPVs) there is a growing demand for a high-temperature stable, thermally-conductive flux-less bonding material able to provide low junction temperatures over the lifetime of the device.

Energetics: Here we are talking about fuses and timed devices, with specially-shaped initiators that take advantage of the ignition properties and the reaction rate and energy produced by the NanoFoil^®.

[ACM] Tommy: very interesting! Many thanks for your time.

Future Fab Blog has just been announced. According to their site, "it is written by the editorial panel members of Future Fab International. It's aim is to focus on the semiconductor, nanotechnology and microelectronics industries, but we give free reign to our esteemed authors to write about anything they see fit. They are, afterall, some of the most brilliant and best thinkers around!"

The authors are very experienced in the industry - I think they will do a great job. Welcome to the blogosphere!

If you are interested in technology, trends, and general goings on in the semiconductor, microelectronics, or nano areas, do check this blog out.