NSF Award
0060706
This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project focuses on the development of a new,<br/>pulsed laser deposition based method to the combinatorial approach for generating nanoscale heterostructures. Nanoscale heterostructures, or "superlattices", have previously been shown to exhibit properties that are not expected from the known characteristics of the constituent materials. However, a systematic study of such structures has been impossible due to the lack of a high-throughput synthesis method. The proposed approach is based on a newly introduced, patented continuous-compositional spread technique and will be applicable to a wide variety of materials, including magnetic materials, piezoelectric materials, and optical materials.<br/><br/>The direct result of this program will be the availability of an automated apparatus for the growth of a rich variety of nanoscale heterostructures. Since such an instrument is not currently available on the market, the company anticipates strong sales to university and industrial research laboratories.
