Printed spark ablation nanoparticle films for microelectronic applications

This thesis is about the application and characterisation of spark ablation generated nanoparticles in microelectronics. It opens in chapter 1 with a general motivation of the need for advanced materials and for nanotechnology in particular. It then describes what nanoparticles are and why they are promising materials. Some of their advantages...

Nanostructured Thermoelectric Films Synthesised by Spark Ablation and Their Oxidation Behaviour: Nanomaterials

Reducing the thermal conductivity of thermoelectric materials has been a field of intense research to improve the efficiency of thermoelectric devices. One approach is to create a nanostructured thermoelectric material that has a low thermal conductivity due to its high number of grain boundaries or voids, which scatter phonons. Here, we present...

Enhancement of Room Temperature Ethanol Sensing by Optimizing the Density of Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanofibers Decorated with Gold Nanoparticles

An ethanol gas sensor based on carbon nanofibers (CNFs) with various densities and nanoparticle functionalization was investigated. The CNFs were grown by means of a Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD), and the synthesis conditions were varied to obtain different number of fibers per unit area. The devices with a larger density of...

Mass and density determination of porous nanoparticle films using a quartz crystal microbalance

A method is presented to directly measure the mass output of an impaction printer coupled with a spark ablation generator. It is based on a quartz crystal microbalance and shown to be reliable in quantifying mass deposition rate. Here, the method is demonstrated with an Au nanoparticle aerosol synthesized under several spark ablation and...

Low Temperature Sapphire to Silicon Flip Chip Interconnects by Copper Nanoparticle Sintering

The continuous trend to integrate more multi-functions in a package often involves, Heterogeneous Integration of multi-functional blocks in some kind of 3D stacking. The conventional flip chip for die-on-substrate technology applies solder for integration. However, solder joint integration has the disadvantages of restricting height, reflow...

Patterning of fine-features in nanoporous films synthesized by spark ablation

Advances in semiconductor device manufacturing technologies are enabled by the development and application of novel materials. Especially one class of materials, nanoporous films, became building blocks for a broad range of applications, such as gas sensors and interconnects. Therefore, a versatile fabrication technology is needed to...

ZnO Nanoparticle Printing for UV Sensor Fabrication

In this work, a novel microfabrication-compatible production process is demonstrated and used to fabricate UV photoresistors made from ZnO nanoparticles. It comprises a simple room-temperature production method for synthesizing and direct-writing nanoparticles. The method can be used on a wide range of surfaces and print a wide range of...

Synthesis of Carbon nanofibers (CNFs) by PECVD using Ni catalyst printed by spark ablation

The precise control of patterned arrays of carbon nanofibers (CNFs) is an issue of interest in a wide range of applications. In the present work, we report the synthesis of CNFs grown by plasma-enhanced CVD (PECVD) from a Ni catalyst patterned via aerosol printing of nanoparticles (NPs) by a spark ablation technique. The printing speeds were...

FET-based integrated charge sensing in a MEM organ-on-chip platform

High Step Coverage Interconnects By Printed Nanoparticles

The growing diversity in the used materials in semiconductor packaging provides challenges for achieving good interconnection. Particularly the very soft substrates, such as paper and polymers, and very hard, such as silicon carbide, offer unique challenges to wire-bonding or formation of vertical interconnects. Complementary technologies are...

Dual-Gate Fet-Based Charge Sensor Enhanced by In-Situ Electrode Decoration in a MEMS Organs-On-Chip Platform

Continuous monitoring of tissue microphysiology is a key enabling feature of the organ-on-chip (OoC) approach for drug screening and disease modeling. Sensing charged species in OoC tissue microenvironments is thereby essential. However, the inherently small (i.e., cm) size of OoC devices poses the challenging requirement to integrate...

3D-impaction printing of porous layers

Porous layers composed of nanoparticles (NPs) have a wide range of (potential) applications including catalysts, (chemical) sensors, thermoelectric materials and electronics. These application domains will profit strongly from our NP printing process which is flexible with respect to i) the composition of the NPs and ii) the possibility of...

The interface adhesion of CaAlSiN₃: Eu²⁺ phosphor/silicone used in light-emitting diode packaging: A first principles study

The CaAlSiN₃:Eu²⁺ red phosphor and its silicone/phosphor composite are very promising materials used in the high color rendering white light-emitting diode (LED) packaging. However, the reliabilities of CaAlSiN₃:Eu²⁺ and its composite are still being challenged by phosphor hydrolysis at high...

FET-based charge sensor for organs-on-chip with in-situ electrode decoration

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