Sidlgata V. Sreenivasan

Scalable Imprinting of Shape-Specific Polymeric Nanocarriers Using a Release Layer of Switchable Water Solubility

There is increasing interest in fabricating shape-specific polymeric nano- and microparticles for efficient delivery of drugs and imaging agents. The size and shape of these particles could significantly influence their transport properties and play an important role in in vivo biodistribution, targeting, and cellular uptake. Nanoimprint lithography methods, such as jet-and-flash imprint lithography (J-FIL), provide versatile top-down processes to fabricate shape-specific, biocompatible nanoscale hydrogels that can deliver therapeutic and diagnostic molecules in response to disease-specific cues. However, the key challenges in top-down fabrication of such nanocarriers are scalable imprinting with biological and biocompatible materials, ease of particle-surface modification using both aqueous and organic chemistry as well as simple yet biocompatible harvesting. Here we report that a biopolymer-based sacrificial release layer in combination with improved nanocarrier-material formulation can address these challenges. The sacrificial layer improves scalability and ease of imprint-surface modification due to its switchable solubility through simple ion exchange between monovalent and divalent cations. This process enables large-scale bionanoimprinting and efficient, one-step harvesting of hydrogel nanoparticles in both water- and organic-based imprint solutions.

Compliant pin chuck for minimizing the effect of backside particles on wafer planarity

A wafer chuck referred to as the compliant pin chuck (CPC) that can minimize the nonplanarity effect of backside particles on semiconductor wafers is presented in this article. The demand for flatter semiconductor substrates has been increasing as the size of the features that can be transferred onto a wafer surface becomes smaller. There are a number of factors affecting wafer planarity, most of which can be corrected by conventional wafer chucks. However, the problem of backside particles (particles affect a large portion of wafer real estate by causing out-of-plane distortion when they get lodged between a wafer and a wafer chuck) has not been adequately addressed by the current wafer chuck technology. The compliant pin chuck was designed to address this concern and fabricated from silicon using lithography based microfabrication techniques. The chuck consists of an array of microflexure mechanisms that react to the presence of backside particles so as to minimize the nonplanarity caused otherwise. It ...