Direct Prototyping of Patterned Nanoporous Carbon: A Route from Materials to On-chip Devices

Prototyping of nanoporous carbon membranes with three-dimensional microscale patterns is significant for integration of such multifunctional materials into various miniaturized systems. Incorporating nano material synthesis into microelectronics technology, we present a novel approach to direct prototyping of carbon membranes with highly nanoporous structures inside. Membranes with significant thicknesses (1, 40 mm) are rapidly prototyped at wafer level by combining nano templating method with readily available microfabrication techniques, which include photolithography, high-temperature annealing and etching. In particular, the high-surface-area membranes are specified as three-dimensional electrodes for micro supercapacitors and show high performance compared to reported ones. Improvements in scalability, compatibility and cost make the general strategy promising for batch fabrication of operational on-chip devices or full integration of three-dimensional nanoporous membranes with existing micro systems.