It goes without saying that the increasing miniaturization of conventional electronic components based on a 2D planar interface for charge transfer is approaching its limit. The new challenge is to further reduce the size of electronic components while preserving their performance. The 3DAFSN Lab is exploring alternative approaches for further miniaturization taking advantage the high surface-to-volume ratio of 3D bulk nanoporous materials. An ongoing project in our lab corresponds to the development of 3D solid-state nanobatteries and 3D nanocapacitors using atomic layer deposition (ALD) techniques to grow these devices in nanoporous metals scaffolds (See Figure 1).
Reference: S.S. Welborn, S. van der Meer, J.S. Corsi, J.T.M. De Hosson and E. Detsi (Under review).

Figure 1: (a, b) Al2O3 layer at different magnifications deposited by ALD on a nanoporous gold scaffold. (c, d) ZnO layer at different magnifications deposited by ALD on a nanoporous gold scaffold.
Lead Student: Sam Welborn, Alex Ng
Reference: S.S. Welborn, S. van der Meer, J.S. Corsi, J.T.M. De Hosson and E. Detsi (Under review).