Nanoparticle-based energetic materials: nanoscale and mesoscale fabrication processes
Résumé
The drastic downscaling of devices in the semiconductor industry is currently facing physical limitations that can only be overcome with the emergence of new technological routes. Recent achievements in nanofabrication using "bio-inspired" approaches have ushered in a new and promising research domain. Bio-inspired technologies are built on the use of biomaterials to direct the nanoscale assembly of elementary physical nano-objects into desired 1D to 3D functional structures. This approach involves a diversion of biomolecules (synthetic or not) or biomolecular processes to meet the requirements of non biological nanodevices and nanosystems, and to fabricate multi-scale 2D and 3D multi-functional structures. The most emblematic achievements in bio-inspired technologies rely on DNA, which has been used as a multifunctional assembling tool based on double helix base-pairing that can be programmed to self assemble virtually any nano-objects. Given that demonstrations of concept have been obtained by many teams over the past few years, the cycle of breakthrough in functional material for energy, optics, electronics and other application is nearly complete, and new bio-inspired devices should find a broad range of applications as MEMS for energy, imaging, sensing and actuating.