Green Approaches to Nanoscale Engineering: Plasmonic Resonators, Chemical Sensors,
Rubber Solar Cells, and Electronic Skin
Darren J. Lipomi, Ph.D.
Harvard University, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (Ph.D.)
Stanford University, Department of Chemical Engineering (Postdoctoral Fellow)
ABSTRACT: This seminar describes approaches to nanoscale engineering that use processes and materials that conserve energy and resources—“green nanofabrication.” Examples of these approaches include shadow evaporation, indentation lithography, and nanoskiving. Nanoskiving, for example, combines thin-film deposition with replication by mechanical sectioning with an ultramicrotome. Demonstrated applications these techniques include those in microelectronics, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, nanowire chemical sensors, organic solar cells, plasmonic waveguides, and arrays of near-IR plasmonic resonators. I will then discuss elastic materials for low-cost (also low-energy) solar modules, such as stretchable, nanostructured films of semiconducting polymers and stretchable films of carbon nanotubes. Applications include the first “rubber” solar cell, and a “skin-like” sensor of mechanical deformation.
BIO:
Darren Lipomi was born in Rochester, New York, and grew up in the nearby town of Hilton. He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry, with a minor in physics, from Boston University in 2005. At B.U., he carried out research in the laboratory of Professor James S. Panek, where he developed green approaches to heterogeneous catalysis for medicinal chemistry. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry at Harvard University in 2010. There, he worked in the laboratory of Professor George M. Whitesides in the areas of nanofabrication; nanostructured materials for optics and electronics; and organic photovoltaics. He is currently a US Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University, in the Department of Chemical Engineering, in the Laboratory of Professor Zhenan Bao. At Stanford, his work focuses on elastic transparent electrodes and stretchable semiconductors for solar energy conversion.