Arunkumar Subramanian
University of Illinois Chicago, IL·Engineering
Making computer chips and other nanoscale devices usually means carving patterns out of material. A different approach is to print tiny features drop by drop, adding material only where it is needed.
- Fields
Engineering
Materials Science
Physics
- Topics
nanomanufacturing
electrohydrodynamic printing
EHD printing
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Test whether nanoscale nozzles with on-chip electrodes enable sub-continuum nano-dripping, ejecting droplets smaller than 20 nanometers under very low electric stress, using the silicon-based SNAP-Chip printer.
- Uncover the physics of nanodroplet ejection, transport and vaporization, including thermal fluctuations and electrokinetic effects at the liquid surface, by combining coupled-physics experiments with Many-body Dissipative Particle Dynamics simulations.
- Use SNAP-Chip to additively print solid three-dimensional patterns with features as small as single-digit nanometers, in a process compatible with integrated circuit manufacturing.
More about the research
This project explores printing with droplets so small, yoctoliters to zeptoliters (10⁻²⁴ to 10⁻²¹ liters), that ordinary fluid physics no longer fully describes them. It studies how electric fields pull such nanodroplets from a nozzle, carry them and evaporate them. The goal is a printer built entirely on a chip that could make 3D nanostructures and work alongside standard integrated circuit manufacturing.
Why it matters
An on-chip printer that adds material at the scale of a few nanometers could offer cheaper, lower-power and simpler ways to pattern devices. Industries that could benefit include integrated circuits, micro- and nano-electromechanical systems, flexible electronics, touchscreens, industrial spraying and security printing.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Yang Cao
Montana State University, MT·Engineering
Use machine learning to map how the composition of metallic nanoparticle inks controls their rheological (flow) properties, speeding up ink development for electrohydrodynamic (EHD) 3D printing.
Yiwei Han
University of Mississippi, MS·Engineering·Early-career
Determine how extrusion-printed shape-changing structures affect electrohydrodynamic (EHD) printing, a high-resolution method that jets fine droplets with an electric field, and how EHD deposition speed affects resolution and impact damage.
Roozbeh Salary
Marshall University, WV·Engineering
Identify the airflow effects that set feature size and resolution in aerosol jet printing, using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of how gas and ink droplets move.
The school
University of Illinois Chicago: 42 labs on PI Pages, $532M a year on research, 359 research doctorates a year.
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