Publication Date

2021

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Korampally, Venumadhav

Degree Name

M.S. (Master of Science)

Legacy Department

Department of Electrical Engineering

Abstract

Improvement in the Anti-reflection coating (ARC) technology is considered as one of the most important advances made in modern lens design, for microscopes, cameras, and other optical devices. In the semiconductor industry, integrated circuit (IC) chip manufactures face increasing challenges posed by reflections from the underlying substrate during photolithography, a process used for the fabrication of IC’s. Without the introduction of ARC materials, the nanoscale circuitry that drives today’s modern electronic devices would not be possible. Despite its technological significance, real materialistic solutions with low refractive index (less than 1.3) are limited. Antireflection (AR) coatings today are most often based on single or multilayer interference structures with alternating high and low refractive structures. An alternate to this would be a graded refractive index surface, which can be observed in nature, on the corneal surfaces of a moth eye and night-active butterflies. This research focuses on biomimicking these anisotropic pillar-like nanostructures, similar to the ones seen in a moth eye. Furthermore, conventional fabrication technologies suffer from being time-consuming, expensive, and restricted to small areas. A major challenge remains in fabricating these arrays on large-area substrates using a simple and scalable technique. This work proposes a novel method of an easy roll-to-roll technique of using molded masks with ink to stamp the structures on large-area substrate like glass, in the nanoscale. It exploits the usage of a solution processed nano-transfer printing technique for rapid and high throughput fabrication of heat stable and mechanically robust nanostructures.

Extent

98 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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