Scalable Technologies for Advanced Manufacturing (STEAM) Lab
At the STEAM Lab, we are attacking the scalability problem of advanced manufacturing. Manufacturing is the science and engineering of making products to specifications. Advanced manufacturing refers to improvements in manufacturing processes and products through use of innovative technologies. These improvements could be in the form of finer quality, higher production rates, better versatility, lower cost, or a larger material set. For many emerging advanced manufacturing processes, there are significant barriers that prevent delivering these improvements on the scales necessary to make a tangible real-world impact. Our goal is to overcome these barriers through the generation of new manufacturing capabilities.
Our focus:
Our current focus is on the manufacturing of complex 3D structures with single-digit micrometer and nanoscale features in a variety of materials including polymers, metals, ceramics, and composites. Such 3D structures can enable quantum information transfer in integrated quantum photonics devices, high-yield fuel capsules for inertial fusion energy, high-sensitivity chemical sensors, fast-charging batteries, miniaturized optics such as lenses mounted on optical fibers, synthetic biomaterials for cell therapies, and micro-robotics for drug delivery. Unfortunately, the lack of manufacturing scalability hinders transitioning these technologies from one-off demonstrations in research laboratories to widespread real-world use.
Our approach:
It is our hypothesis that the scalability problem of micro and nanoscale manufacturing cannot be solved by simply increasing the number of machines/systems working in parallel. This is based on the observation that novel demonstrations of nanoscale processing are often achieved using visualization/metrology equipment that are ill-suited for resource-efficient and large-scale manufacturing.
Our approach involves understanding the fundamental manufacturing science underlying the energy-matter interactions that generate micro and nanoscale features and applying this knowledge to engineer processes, techniques, and tools that scale up manufacturing. Our work draws from multiple disciplines: additive manufacturing, ultrafast optics, multi-photon lithography, laser processing, polymerization chemistry & chemical reactions, applied mechanics, nucleation and crystallization, machine learning, and precision machine design. We aim to generate advanced manufacturing capabilities that break performance tradeoffs. So far, we have broken the rate versus resolution tradeoff and the cost versus resolution tradeoff in nanoscale additive manufacturing.