Direct-write polymer nanolithography in ultra-high vacuum

• Woo-Kyung Lee,
• Minchul Yang,
• Arnaldo R. Laracuente,
• William P. King,
• Lloyd J. Whitman and
• Paul E. Sheehan

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 52–56, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.6

• or modify previously deposited films [5][6]. In the case of DPN, the AFM probe can be used to write a wide range of molecular inks with resolutions down to 15 nm [3][7][8]. However, in conventional DPN writing depends on the intrinsic fluidity of the ink molecules or on the creation of ink fluidity

• using solvents [9]. Unfortunately, inks and solvents that have sufficient intrinsic fluidity for DPN evaporate quickly in vacuum. This paper reports that thermal dip-pen nanolithography (tDPN) [10] can deposit polymer nanostructures from a heated AFM tip in a high vacuum environment (Figure 1b). In tDPN

• point inks such as polymers that also have low volatility and so may be deposited under a vacuum. Results and Discussion Our initial approach for depositing organic inks was to attempt DPN with octadecanethiol (ODT), a classic ink for DPN that reproducibly transfers to the substrate. However, it was