Multi-material nano3D printer to do material research

Our novel multi-material nano3D printer [8] can be used to synthesize very-high-density peptide arrays, (more) but recently we realized that its very special feature of printing extremely thin material layers (Fig. 7) can also be used to combinatorial stack nanolayers on top of each other. Please note, the structure shown in Fig. 7 used single laser pulses to stack approx. 1,5nm thin material layers on top of each other. This layer thickness is thin enough, e.g. to program a gradient of redox centres by printing consecutive material layers.

Funded by the FET-Proactive proposal NANOSTACKS (more) we currently explore the use of our nano3D printer to screen for novel nanoscale materials, e.g. solar cells, fuel cells, diodes, light-emitting diodes, or batteries.

Fig. 7; Additive manufacturing of nanostructures. The nano3D printer was used to stack approx. 1,5nm thin layers of polymer SLEC7552 on top of each other with the help of single laser pulses. Single laser pulses gave a layer thickness of approx. 1,5nm, four additional pulses increased layer thickness to approx. 8nm. PhD thesis Tobias Förtsch, 2017, KIT.

[8] Loeffler FF, Foertsch TC, Popov R, Mattes DS, Schlageter M, Sedlmayr M, Ridder B, Dang FX, von Bojničić-Kninski C, Weber LK, Fischer A, Greifenstein J, Bykovskaya V, Buliev I, Bischoff FR, Hahn L, Meier MAR, Bräse S, Powell AK, BalabanTS, Breitling F, Nesterov-Mueller A. High-flexibility combinatorial peptide synthesis with laser-based transfer of monomers in matrix material. Nature Communications, 2016, DOI: 10.1038/NCOMMS11844

[12] Tobias Förtsch (Physicist): Kombinatorischer laserinduzierter Vorwärtstransfer zur Herstellung von biomolekularen Mikroarrays. (PhD Thesis, 2017) DOI: 10.5445/IR/1000074023