Materials Research Lecture

The fabrication of high performance integrated circuits provides examples of the most sophisticated manufacturing methods, as well as the most high performance materials, used in any area of modern technology.  The advanced functional systems they provide are ones that are generally characterized by a massive integration of circuit elements within compact, rigid and essentially planar form factor devices.  New means of fabrication and enabling nanomembrane materials are beginning to provide a set of means through which it is possible to lift these constraints—doing so in ways that both retain capacities for high (or altogether new forms of) performance while enabling new opportunities in technology.  Our collaborative research here at the University of Illinois is providing form factors for devices with interesting but what had been to date difficult to realize features.  Examples include: light weight, large area, high performance electronics, optics, and photonics; electrooptical systems with curvilinear shapes and capacities for accommodating demanding forms of mechanical flexure; new device form factors for use in sensing and imaging that integrate responsive materials in 3D with demanding nanometer design rules; functional biomaterials, and hybrid systems for lighting, energy storage, and photovoltaic energy conversion that provide a potentially transformational approach to supplant current technologies with high performance, low cost alternatives.  Taken together, the results recent research and commercialization efforts illustrate important opportunities for exploiting advances in materials in synergy within additive and physical means of patterning and fabrication.  In this lecture I will explore several exemplary applications taken from this work, and specifically highlight scalable approaches to high performance integrated systems for low cost photovoltaic energy conversion.