An Electroplating-Based Approach to Volumetric Nanomanufacturing and its Application to Energy Storage and Conversion 

Mark G. Allen

Regents' Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Executive Director, Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology

Georgia Institute of Technology 

The manufacture of materials with bulk volumes and precisely controlled nanostructure has led to the creation of materials with surprising and useful mechanical and electrical properties.  Such manufacturing approaches typically exploit ‘bottom-up’ techniques to create the desired nanostructure, making it difficult to precisely design a priori the material properties.  Recently we have developed a ‘top-down’ technique based on sequential electroplating that allows the creation of highly-structured multilayer metallic materials, with precisely designed characteristic lengths in the hundreds of nanometers but volumes of manufactured material in the macro range.  This electroplating-based approach also enables batch fabrication of nanostructures.  The fabrication relies on automated and repeated multilayer electrodepositions of multiple metallic materials, followed by sacrificial etching of one metal.  The remaining structure consists of individualized high-lateral-aspect-ratio sub-micron metallic films.  As an example application, the use of these materials in energy storage applications, including batteries and DC/DC converters, will be discussed. 

Dr. Mark G. Allen received the B.A. degree in Chemistry, the B.S.E. degree in Chemical Engineering, and the B.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from theUniversityofPennsylvania, and the S.M. and Ph.D. (1989) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1989 he joined the faculty of theSchoolofElectricaland Computer Engineering of the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he currently holds the rank of Regents' Professor and the J.M. Pettit Professorship in Microelectronics. His current research interests are in the field of microfabrication and nanofabrication technology, with emphasis on new approaches to fabricate devices with characteristic lengths in the micro- to nanoscale from both silicon and non-silicon materials. Professor Allen was the co-chair of the 1996 IEEE/ASME Microelectromechanical Systems Conference and the 2012 Power MEMS conference. He is also co-founder of multiple MEMS-oriented companies, including CardioMEMS and Axion Biosystems.  He is a Fellow of the IEEE.