Nanomanufacturing @ ISNM 2005

Nanomanufacturing

Manufacturing can be defined as the transformation of materials and information into goods for the satisfaction of society needs. To achieve this goal, manufacturing must deal with manufacturing processes and systems to produce goods in varying volumes with high quality, fast production rates, and low cost. To accommodate the varying requirements of customers, the manufacturing processes must be robust and the manufacturing systems must be flexible to minimize the capital investment when a variety of products must be manufactured. These attributes are equally applicable to manufacturing of nanoscale products as well as conventional products. They call specifically for fundamental manufacturing research in the scalability of processes and products, inherently integrated during all phases of the product life cycle; manufacturability for mass production by its nature can not be a separate afterthought to the laboratory fabrication and demonstration of nanodevices and systems. For more insights to nanomanufacturing, see review article on Nanomanufacturing: Technical Advances, Research Challenges and Future Directions.

Purpose of ISNM 2005

There is a great deal of anticipation that nanotechnology and Nanomanufacturing will usher in the next phase of industrial revolution. Yet, the crystal ball is less than clear. Although much research work is being done to enable a variety of nanoproducts, there are many outstanding fundamental issues related to the manufacturing of these nanoproducts at acceptable costs, rates, yields and reproducible quality. In addition, the environmental, economic, social, legal and regulatory implications of large-scale nanomanufacturing technology transfer and production, along with the role of international collaboration, have never been systematically considered in conjunction with technical research. ISNM 2005 will address basic research, education, dissemination and cooperation issues related to the manufacturing of nanoproducts to accelerate the introduction of enabling and disruptive nanotechnologies as viable industrial products and processes.

Scope and Themes

Nanomanufacturing focuses on the key process and system issues that will enable the emergence of ubiquitous products based on nanotechnology. Processes must be invented and manufacturing systems must be designed. The yield, interconnection, and metrology issues that evolve out of integrating principles of nanoscience with manufacturing methodologies need to be addressed across multi-disciplinary energetic domains (mechanical, thermofluid, electrical, optical, chemical, biological etc). The domains where nanoscale devices provide superior system performance in systems serving real users in the macro-world must be identified. Some typical questions are illustrated below:

• When is the capital cost of miniaturization acceptable and justifiable?
• How does production of high quality nanodevices in highly constrained environments (e.g. clean room) compare with that of highly redundant systems in more affordable facilities?
• When does it make sense to depart from deterministic design principles in favor of guided self-organization?
• When do hybrid design schemes (with deterministic as well as self-assembled components) become superior?
• How can the system designer ensure integrability in manufacturing when the product depends on multiple length scale devices to function?
• How can serial nanostructure processing be parallelized? How can batch nanomanufacturing methods be scaled into continuous processes?
• How can computationally efficient models, spanning multiple dimensional domains, be developed for nanomanufacturing processing and products, to guide the designer?
• How can quality control, via real-time sensing and off-line metrology, be integrated into nanomanufacturing processing?

Current nanomanufacturing research consists of theoretical studies as well as system demonstrations for systems involving nanocomponents. Nanomanufactured products require product processes with standardized reliability and quality testing procedures. This effort will lead to the next step in nanotechnology, bringing it within the grasp of the consumer.

Focus of ISNM 2005

Thematically, special emphasis in ISNM 2005 will be placed in nanomanufacturing of sensors, medical devices and in biomanufacturing at the nanoscale, because of the internationally increasing importance of nano-sensors and actuators for health, safety, security and environmental monitoring and remediation. Biomanufacturing also opens new revolutionary ways for mass production and/or complex functionality of nanosystems using biological entities as tools and/or components. Aside from these themes, both the keynote lectures and conference sessions will reflect classical research topics in directed and self-assembly, 2D patterning with beams, probes and imprinting, 3D templating and scaffolding, soft lithography, deposition and etching, metrology and manipulation, simulation, modeling and control, as well as nanosystem applications such as N/MEMS, biosensors, drug delivery devices, tissue engineering etc.

Parallel Objectives

Besides interfacing with international industry and government resources for nanomanufacturing research, the objectives of ISNM 2005 include educational pathways for teaching manufacturing at the nanoscale, and dissemination of materials and best practices to the academic and industrial community. The conference will also invite socio-economic scientists to sessions dedicated to entrepreneurship and technology transfer, health and safety, security and the environment. Participation of women and underrepresented minorities will be actively solicited both for the keynote lectures and for organization of the technical sessions, while attendance of starting investigators (postdocs, graduate and advanced undergraduate students) will be financially subsidized through a Best Poster Competition among starting investigators. Local Students-Volunteers at the University of Cyprus involved in manufacturing and/or nanotechnology research will provide custom facilitation and facility tours to researchers from abroad during their sojourn at the conference. Exposure to the technical expertise and advice of the guests is expected to contribute invaluably also to the research perspectives and contacts of these students.