NNIN at Penn State Focus Area
Penn State University provides expertise in depositing, patterning, etching, and integrating complex oxide thin film materials for a wide variety of device and system applications to the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN).
Thin films — Metallization and a wide variety of piezoelectric, pyroelectric, dielectric, and resistive thin films can be grown and patterned
Characterization — Ferroelectric films, dielectrics, and nonlinear optical materials
Prototype complex oxide based infrared sensor arrays are being fabricated using PZT materials and fabrication processes developed at the Nanofabrication Lab.
The sensor arrays have been integrated into infrared cameras and show great promise
for low-cost thermal imaging systems.
-Bridge Semiconductor, Pittsburgh, PA
A researcher deposits a PZT film
via spin-coating on 4-inch wafers
in the Keck class 100 cleanroom.
Advanced electroceramic materials are enabling new devices and emerging technologies. At Penn State, faculty, staff, and students explore the properties of materials in real-world applications through the fabrication of devices in the Keck Smart Materials Integration Laboratory. By integrating materials into prototype devices, students gain hands-on experience. Industry benefits as new materials and devices are tested and improved in the lab.
A smart material senses a change in its environment and responds to that change in a useful way. In the Keck SMIL, scientists are creating a new generation of smart integrated components that combine electrical, mechanical, and optical functions.
•Smart piezoelectric sensors and actuators
•Metamaterials •All-optical circuits than can process light at GigaHertz frequencies
•Tunable dielectrics for microwave communication
•Integrated passive components - Nanotube-based solar cells
•High frequency ultrasound for nondestructive investigation of organs and cells
Resonant metamaterial - high-permittivity dielectric
resonators embedded in a low-permittivity matrix for
microwave transmission.
-Lanagan and Semouchkina
- Penn State
Multilayer thin film capacitors fabricated using
microcontact printing.
-Trolier-McKinstry, Randall
- Penn State
-Kemet Electronics Corp.
- South Carolina
High sensitivity accelerometers are
fabricated on a
6mm square die.
-Trolier-McKinstry
- Penn State
Devices such as this
R & D 100 award winning optical fiber alignment package made of low temperature co-fired ceramic are fabricated in the Smart
Materials Integration Laboratory. The device, based on
research by faculty and graduate students in Penn
State’s International Center for Actuators and Transducers and the Center for Dielectric Studies, offer an economically viable
method of aligning and realigning optical fibers.
-Uchino and Randall
- Penn State
