Jun 12 2015
Northwestern University’s International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN) has been awarded a five-year, $8.5 million grant by the U.S. Department of Defense as a part of Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program for developing a next generation 4D printer for scientific purposes.
The new 4D printer could operate at the nanoscale level and can be used for fabricating new research equipment in materials sciences, chemistry and U.S. defense-related fields, including microchip designs, catalysts, chemical and biological sensors, and materials that are sensitive to specific signals or other materials.
“This research promises to bring transformative advancement to the development of biosensors, adaptive optics, artificially engineered tissues and more by utilizing nanotechnology,” said IIN director and chemist Chad A. Mirkin, who is leading the multi-institution project and the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
The award was issued to an expert team consisting of researchers from Northwestern, the University of Miami, the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Maryland, by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
In scientific terms, printing involves encoding the information in a definite location on the surface of a material. The 4D printer will be comprised of millions of small elastomeric “pens” that can be separately and independently used to produce nano-sized features with soft or hard materials.
The information to be encoded can be in the form of a material with specific physical and chemical properties. The complexity and quantity of the encoded information can be determined based on the resolution and speed of printing.
The lack of inexpensive devices to perform 3D patterning and high-resolution printing on soft e.g., organic and biological materials, and hard materials e.g., metals and semiconductors at nanoscale has so far limited the development in various fields right from biology to computing to chemical sensing.
“Ultimately, the 4-D printer will provide a foundation for a new generation of tools to develop novel architectures, wherein the hard materials that form the functional components of electronics can be merged with biological or soft materials,” said Milan Mrksich, a co-principal investigator on the grant.
Mrksich is the Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry and Cell and Molecular Biology, with appointments in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Weinberg and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
“Researchers at Northwestern’s International Institute for Nanotechnology have a history of developing the state-of-the-art tools enabling nanotechnology. This new 4-D printing effort represents a wonderful example of a multi-institutional collaboration that capitalizes on such expertise and couples it with expertise at other institutions,” said Jay Walsh, vice president for research at Northwestern.
One of the first molecular printing techniques - dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) - was developed by Mirkin. This technique employs an atomic force microscope, and delivers small molecule packets to a surface using a sharp tip. The molecules are made to interact with the surface and produce stable single-molecule-thick structures. The DPN was named as one of the “100 Scientific Discoveries That Changed the World” in 2012, by National Geographic.
The International Institute for Nanotechnology is an umbrella organization that combines more than $800 million in nanotechnology education, research and supporting infrastructure.