Lithography and Its Uses in Nanotechnology



Programmable Matter



This week we had an experiment based on photolithography where we made circuit boards with this method. Photolithography is a process used to pattern parts of a thin film using light to transfer a geometric pattern from a photoresist onto the substrate.

I decided to look further into lithography in general and was able to find a branch of nanotechnology concerning nanolithography. It’s the application of fabricating nanometer-scale structures with different approaches being optical, electron-beam, nanoimprint, multiphoton, scanning probe, and other lithography techniques. 

All of these procedures are capable of producing patterns with at least one lateral dimension between 1 and 100 nm. 

Researching this particular method led me to reading about programmable matter which is matter that has the ability to change its physical properties in a programmable fashion, based upon user input or autonomous sensing. 
It seems, in the future, we will be able to use nanolithography to combine automata and computer science to potentially create nanobots. Lots of these microscale robots might have the individual power to fly, attach to each other, and communicate all the while receiving power from some sort of wireless power transmission.




This technology might have uses in design when building models of vehicles or architecture. One could possibly alter and remove parts of the model in quick fashion, leading to a more efficient method of designing and producing.
Or perhaps this is how holograms might become a normal part of life, with programmable nano-LEDs that come together to display 3D images from a cloud of these nanobots. 




With this advent of machinery there could be so many more possible uses of it in our daily lives. We are only just on the cusp of nanotechnology and programmable matter but I can see its possible applications in the near future.



Sources

ENGINEERING.com. The Promise and Peril of Programmable Matter > ENGINEERING.Com, www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/14967/The-Promise-and-Peril-of-Programmable-Matter.aspx. Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.

Hawkes, E., et al. “Programmable Matter by Folding.” Programmable Matter by Folding, 2 June 2010.

“Electropermanent Magnets: Programmable Magnets with Zero Static Power Consumption Enable Smallest Modular Robots Yet.” Electropermanent Magnets: Programmable Magnets with Zero Static Power Consumption Enable Smallest Modular Robots Yet | Hizook, www.hizook.com/blog/2010/12/07/electropermanent-magnets-programmable-magnets-zero-static-power-consumption-enable-s.

Posted 27 May 2014 | 15:01 GMT By Philip Ball. “Make Your Own World With Programmable Matter.” IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News, 27 May 2014, spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/robotics-hardware/make-your-own-world-with-programmable-matter.

Erb, Randall M., et al. “Self-Shaping Composites with Programmable Bioinspired Microstructures.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 16 Apr. 2013, www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2666.

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