Nanomanufacturing: Challenges and opportunities from design to fabrication

Summary form only given. The National Science Foundation (NSF) provided approximately $27 million in Fiscal Year 2008 for fundamental research and education in nanomanufacturing in the United States, mostly to colleges and universities, with some support provided to small businesses. The core Nanomanufacturing Program emphasizes scale-up of nanotechnology to increase the production rate, reliability, robustness, yield, and efficiency of manufacturing processes and reduce the cost of nanotechnology products and services. Nanomanufacturing capitalizes on the special material properties and processing capabilities at the nanoscale, promotes integration of nanostructures to functional micro devices and meso/macroscale architectures and systems, and addresses interfacing issues across dimensional scales. The program promotes multi-functionality across all energetic domains, including mechanical, thermal, fluidic, chemical, biochemical, electromagnetic, optical etc. The focus incorporates a systems approach, encompassing nanoscale materials and structures, fabrication and integration processes, production equipment and characterization instrumentation, theory, modeling, simulation and control tools, biomimetic design and integration of multiscale functional systems. Since it is expected that all research efforts will be conducted in the context of eventual industrial application, the program encourages approaches to the scale-up of nanotechnology for high rate production, reliability, robustness, high yield and low cost, and promotes integration of nanostructures to functional micro devices and meso/macroscale systems. Special emphases are on the environmental, health, and societal aspects of nanotechnology and nanomanufacturing.