Thin films of well‐stacked two‐dimensional MXene flakes have been used in various applications, especially in sensors and microscale energy storage devices, such as micro‐supercapacitors. Miniaturization and integration of devices, as well as maximization of device performance require nanoscale patterning of MXene, beyond what can be achieved using inkjet or screen printing. However, nanoscale patterning technology for MXene is yet to be developed. In the present work, a simple fabrication method is demonstrated for manufacturing Ti3C2Tx MXene films with vertically aligned nanopatterns via soft lithography. This process involves polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) stamping with line‐patterned PDMS molds. The feature size of the vertical line patterning of MXene is controlled with the nanometers accuracy by swelling of the PDMS mold by toluene, which also guides vertical alignment of MXene flakes. As a result, vertically aligned MXene nanopatterns are fabricated with a width of ridges less than 200 nm and 2‐µm regular spacing between the ridges. The oleylamine‐functionalized MXene flakes are also developed for better dispersion in toluene, providing a general protocol to fabricate MXene dispersions in nonpolar solvents.
In this work, the authors developed a simple and efficient two-step deposition process for the realization of an x-ray absorption grating: ALD (atomic layer deposition) of a conductive seed layer, followed by electroplating of the absorbing metal with a pulse current mode. An Si grating with a high aspect ratio of 1:40 was fabricated by deep reactive ion etching on an 8 in. Si wafer. In order to form a conductive seed layer on the Si grating with such a high aspect ratio over an area of 10 × 10 cm2, Ru was conformally deposited by a thermal ALD process with O2 reactant gas. The authors analyzed the results of electroplating performed in different bias modes to fill Au in a high aspect ratio Si grating structure. It was found that electroplating in the pulse current mode (duty cycle: 5%, current density: 1.7 mA/cm2) for 79 h allowed Au to uniformly fill the entire grating area, whereas in the direct current mode, severe step coverage on top of the grating was observed. The authors successfully tested the grating fabricated by the suggested two-step deposition process as an absorption grating (G2) for a high x-ray energy Talbot-Lau grating interferometer.
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Here, we describe a next-generation lithographic technique for fabricating ultrahigh-resolution nanostructures. This technique makes use of the secondary sputtering phenomenon of plasma ion etching and of nanoscale electroplating to finely control the resolution of the fabricated structures from ten nanometers to hundreds of nanometers from a single microsized master pattern. In contrast to previously described techniques that incorporate a recently developed secondary sputtering lithography (SSL) patterning approach, which could only yield 10 nm-resolution structures, in the current technique, we used an improved SSL approach to produce various-sized, high-resolution structures. Additionally, this improved SSL approach was used to fabricate size-controllable 3D patterns on various types of substrates, in particular, a silicon wafer, transparent glass, and flexible polycarbonate (PC) film. Thus, this method can serve as a new-concept patterning method for the efficient mass production of ultrahigh-resolution nanostructures.
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