Hybrid Materials: a bottom-up approach for nanotechnology applications Laura Brigo, Erika Zanchetta, Gioia Della Giustina, Giovanna Brusatin * Industrial Engineering Department and INSTM, Via Marzolo 9, 35131 Padova, Italy ABSTRACT Engineered organic-inorganic hybrid materials, HyMat, offer new opportunities for the easy, fast and cheap development of miniaturized functional devices. The integration of inorganic oxide networks, organic functional groups and optically active molecules or nanoparticles allows to obtain combinations of properties and structures otherwise impossible with traditional materials. In particular, a simple and highly versatile synthesis platform enabling preparation of HyMat is presented, which is built up by a bottom-up sol-gel approach at low processing temperatures. A few types of key building blocks pave the way for accessing HyMat and make up their formulation, providing a means to synthesize innovative materials enabling to get: - optically active micro and nanostructures; - miniaturized sensors for analytes in gaseous or liquid media; - direct patternability with a range of lithographic techniques; - variable inorganic and organic compositions, and controlled porosity. Examples of micro and nanostructures based on these spin-on materials with ceramic (i.e. SiO 2 , GeO 2 , Al 2 O 3 , ZrO 2 , TiO 2 ,) and hybrid compositions will be presented for different applications including plasmonic or fluorescent sensors, dry-etching masks with outstanding resistance, optically active micro and nanostructured platforms and high resolution patterns. Keywords: hybrid materials, sol-gel, lithography, resist, inorganic oxides, direct patterning 1. INTRODUCTION Structuring surfaces by a direct lithographic process is uncommon. A functional organic or inorganic material is generally indirectly patterned, by patterning a sacrificial resist deposited on it first, and then by transferring the image of the sacrificial layer to the functional material, in a pattern-transfer step (Figure 1a). Nevertheless, this multi-step process often causes a deterioration of lithographic performance, is time-consuming, and makes the process complicated. Alternative procedures, mainly used to pattern inorganic films, attempt to simplify the traditional complex process using an organic resist pattern as a mould, depositing the film on it and then removing the organic resist by a lift-off process, leaving the patterned structures on the substrate. 1 Therefore, it is essential to broaden the spectrum of spin-on materials that behave as resists (as they proficiently interact with radiation or undergo modifications under specific thermal and pressure conditions and are further processable with development steps) but that can also be employed as final device materials (Figure 1b and c). Organic–inorganic hybrid materials are emerging as an alternative to organic polymers for micro and nanolithography, guaranteeing both solution processability and higher lithographic performance, stability and a wider choice of properties: 3-7 thermal resistance (up to 300 °C), mechanical resistance (antiscratch), chemical endurance (resistance to dissolution). Furthermore, functional properties such as optical (i.e. refractive index), electrical, porosity, etc. can be tuned, and specific functions can be achieved by embedding nanoparticles, dyes or other active molecules, for * giovanna.brusatin@unipd.it; phone +39-049-8275723; www.hymat.dii.unipd.it Invited Paper Nanophotonic Materials XI, edited by Stefano Cabrini, Gilles Lérondel, Adam M. Schwartzberg, Taleb Mokari, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 9161, 91610B · © 2014 SPIE · CCC code: 0277-786X/14/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.2066677 Proc. of SPIE Vol. 9161 91610B-1 Downloaded From: http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 09/17/2014 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms