nanoMFG Node Releases Two Photon Lithography Simulation Tool

The Network for Computational Nanotechnology’s partnership with the Nanomanufacturing (nanoMFG) Node continues to be productive with the development and release of a new simulation tool that is available to the entire nanoHUB community.

Published in early July, the Two Photon Lithography (TPL) tool was developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Mohammad Kabir, a PhD candidate, Varun Kelkar, a master's student, and Darren Adams, Senior Research Programmer with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

“Two Photon Lithography is a nanoscale manufacturing process that uses a photo-polymer resin and light to create three-dimensional structures,” says Kabir. “An important determination for TPL is to discover what would be the smallest structure that can be constructed.”

“The user can enter the properties of the light to be used, such as power and wavelength, along with the properties of the polymer material, and that will allow us to calculate the size of the smallest structure that can be expected from the process.”

According to Kabir, the TPL process can produce 3D structures faster than standard photo-lithography and can be used to quickly prototype new designs from a CAD file. Combined with the new simulation tool, manufacturers should be able to get a much clearer picture of the nanostructure that will result.

Kabir, Kelkar, and Adams plan to continually refine and update the TPL tool. The first step in that process is to gather feedback from users. “Try out the tool and let us know your thoughts via nanoHUB’s feedback system,” says Kabir. “The information that we collect from our users will be very important in this development cycle.”

Planned future upgrades include the addition of some Uncertainty Quantification based on error, as well as the inclusion of a 3D CAD viewer, allowing users to view the final structure that will be created.