11/11/2014
MNTL affiliate Jean Paul Allain has established a sophisticated plasma processing system called IGNIS, which can make self-organized nanomaterials.
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MNTL faculty affiliate Jean-Paul Allain has a unique approach for making self-organized nanomaterials. Tell him the properties you’d like the material to have, and he’ll design a material regardless of any chemical or thermodynamic limits.
Allain and his students use a range of hyper-thermal and high-energy ion and plasma beams to dramatically change the properties of semiconductors, cells, and other nanomaterials. In the future, these engineered nanomaterials will likely have a major impact on electronics, energy, and medicine.
As semiconductor device structures continue to shrink, conventional deposition and lithography methods are reaching their limits. Industry is grappling with a future where researchers may be designing materials for devices with single nanometer dimensions, or about three atoms in size. “When you look at the future of material design, you have to be good at modifying the first layer of atoms,” said Allain.
Allain’s research group has developed two techniques, directed irradiation synthesis (DIS) and directed plasma nanosynthesis (DPNS), capable of tailoring surfaces at the first layer of atoms; they can also transform semiconductor materials at room temperature and without hazardous chemicals.
According to Allain, these techniques have drawn attention from industry because they have the potential to be a disruptive technology. “We can induce changes in materials without relying on chemical or temperature schemes,” said Allain, noting how those two measures drive costs. “We expose the material to several types of beams that work together and control the way atoms are reorganized.”
At the heart of Allain’s research is IGNIS, a sophisticated multi-particle, plasma-based apparatus designed by his group and located at MNTL. With seven different characterization techniques functioning simultaneously, IGNIS precisely correlates the chemistry, composition, and surface structure as material is irradiated and specific optical or electronic properties are introduced.
Allain’s group has used IGNIS to create nanopatterns on III-V compound semiconductors, a class of materials that have been a major strength of MNTL research for several decades. “We’re studying the fundamental way you can drive these patterns’ size, shape, and chemistry,” Allain said. “We can also measure the properties of the material in situ, meaning we can see what effect the modifiers are having on the material’s surface and ultimately the desired properties.”
IGNIS is the only in-situ plasma processing and characterization system that functions at high pressure, which will allow researchers to study living cells in situ, correlating their behavior—if they are growing or differentiating, for example—as they are being irradiated.
“This is important because researchers can coax a primitive cell to differentiate into bone or muscle, but no one understands what happens at that interface between the cell and its environment that leads it to differentiate a certain way,” said Allain, a faculty member in the Nuclear, Radiological & Plasma Engineering Department and an affiliate with Bioengineering. “With IGNIS we will be able to correlate the chemistry with our techniques and visually see how the cell is evolving as we irradiate it. No one anywhere can do that now.”
Although his office is in Talbot Lab, Allain is excited to establish IGNIS at MNTL. “I want to make this facility available to other scientists and engage with people who want to look at the surface chemistry of their materials as it evolves under modifying environments (e.g. high-pressure, temperature, radiation).”