MOSCOW, 26 Apr. Silicon nanoneedles, obtained thanks to the proprietary technology of SPbPU scientists, will increase the life of X-ray machines by 10-50 times, the university believes. According to university specialists, they have already received the smallest monolithic silicon needles in Russia and have learned how to set the necessary parameters for samples. The results of the study are published in Scientific Reports.
Today, nanostructures are used in high-tech portable devices, electronics and medical equipment. However, obtaining them remains a costly and time-consuming process. For example, an installation for the formation of high-quality nanocomponents by photolithography in deep ultraviolet costs about 13 billion rubles, and only one foreign company produces it, said at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU).
University specialists have developed their own technology for the formation of silicon monolithic structures, which consists in a combination of maskless nanospheric lithography and plasma-chemical etching at «room» temperature.
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“As a result, we have learned how to create nanostructures from silicon in the form of needles. The conducted studies made it possible to set nanoneedles of various sizes with a high degree of control and reproducibility. We managed to obtain the smallest monolithic structures in Russia with a base diameter of 72 nm,” said the head of the research laboratory “Technology of Materials and Electronic Products”. world-class scientific center "Advanced Digital Technologies" SPbPU Artem Osipov.
He emphasized that the technology has a number of advantages over similar ones, in particular, it does not require the use of an additional template, with which the pattern will be transferred to a silicon wafer, and also allows the plasma-chemical etching process to be carried out without use of ultra-low temperatures.
«We take a clean substrate and apply nanospheres by centrifugation. Then the sample is placed in a plasma-chemical etching unit, where the diameter of the spheres is reduced to the desired values, after which the silicon is etched. At the final stage of the process, the remains of the spheres are removed, leaving a finished sample with a uniform structure «, — continued Osipov.
With the ability to controllable change the size of the needles formed into an ordered array, nanostructures can be used for the specific needs of domestic high-tech equipment, the researcher noted.
For example, the development will help to significantly extend the life of X-ray machines. In such devices, lamps with «hot» cathodes are often used, but they quickly become unusable, and also take time to heat up. In turn, the nanoneedles created by scientists can be used as «cold» cathodes that do not require preheating. Due to this, such elements will work 10–50 times longer and it will take less time to activate them, Osipov believes.
«Also, our development will make it possible to create FED displays that have lower power consumption compared to liquid crystal displays, a large viewing angle and a high image refresh rate (more than 200 Hz),» the head of the laboratory suggested.
In the near future In the future, on the basis of SPbPU, it is planned to assemble industrial samples of installations for combining maskless nanospheric lithography and plasma-chemical etching with machine learning. Further, scientists will master the technologies for forming nanostructures of other geometric shapes, which will significantly expand the possibilities for the development of domestic high technologies, the university emphasized. br />