Applications of Nanofabrication

The progress of nanofabrication is always driven by applications. On the other hand, curiosity-driven development of new nanofabrication techniques can inspire new applications. This chapter chooses integrated circuit (IC), photonics, and nanotechnology as the examples, to describe how different techniques or processes are used in each application example and cross-reference them to the previous chapters of this book. The chapter shows that each of these applications has its own unique requirements on the nanofabrication technologies to be used. IC manufacturing requires the most sophisticated fabrication technologies. Photonic applications require relatively simple and mostly single layer patterning of periodic structures. Regarding nanotechnology, four specific application domains are introduced, i.e., nanomaterials, nanoelectronics, nanophotonics, and nanobiotechnology. Each of them has its own nanoscale requirements, whether using nano template to make nanomaterials and creating nano confinement to facilitate quantum effect in nanoelectronics or nano antennas to generate plasmonic emission in nanophotonics and nanofluidic channels for nanobiotechnology. From these application examples, one can have ideas of how important and indispensable the nanofabrication to these application fields and beyond.