UW-Madison tries new techniques for nanotech

A partnership between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland may have uncovered a new solution for building nanoelectronics.

Nanotechnology is typically difficult to work with because of the complex patterns involved and their extremely small size – sometimes down to the scale of individual molecules.

Current methods to replicate the patterns can work on scales as small as 50 nanometers, a tiny fraction of the width of a human hair, but as technology becomes more powerful it may not be able to get smaller.

UW's research team, which includes chemical and biological engineering professors Paul Nealey and Juan de Pablo and UW physics associate professor Marcus Mueller, is studying new types of self-assembly materials for nanotechnology.

The new research, done at UW-Madison's Synchrotron Radiation Center, builds off research done by Nealey two years ago. Nealy came up with a technique for creating patterns in materials that are used as nanomanufacturing "templates" and can be perfectly duplicated.

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