Fabrication of uniform and high resolution copper nanowire using intermediate self-assembled monolayers through direct AFM lithography

Abstract

Electrochemical AFM lithography was used to directly fabricate copper nanowires. The copper ions were strongly reduced by a negative sample bias at the point where the AFM tip was localized, and copper metal wires were successfully fabricated following the direction of the electrical field of the bias. A TDA⋅HCl self-assembled monolayer (SAM) was found to play an important role as an intermediate layer for enhancing the capability of high resolution and complete development after the AFM lithographic process. The physical and electrical properties of the wires were analyzed by AFM, EFM, SEM, TEM and I-V measurement. The fabricated copper has promising potential for applications such as masks and interconnectors for nanoelectronic devices.

Advanced oxidation scanning probe lithography

“…Oxidation SPL has been extensively applied to modify self-assembled monolayers [83,[96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109]. Those experiments have produced remarkable examples on the guided assembly of metallic nanoparticles on top of self-assembled monolayers [100][101][102][103].…”

“…Oxidation SPL has been extensively applied to modify self-assembled monolayers [83,[96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109]. Those experiments have produced remarkable examples on the guided assembly of metallic nanoparticles on top of self-assembled monolayers [100][101][102][103]. In particular, Sagiv's group has pioneered the oxidation of the terminal groups of self-assembled monolayers to build molecular architectures [100,104,105].…”

AFM Nanomanipulation with Tip Morphology Estimation and Positioning Compensation

“…Atomic force microscopy (AFM) taking advantages of its high resolution, high precision and low requirements to the environment, is considered as one of the most promising method for manipulation at nanoscale [1][2]. It has been widely used in many fields of research, such as life sciences field [3][4][5], information and communication field [6][7][8], energy technology field [9,10], material field [11,12] and so on. However, since AFM was initially invented for imaging, there were many challenging problems using it for nanomanipulation, ranging from thermal drift control to realtime feedback.…”

Investigation of the Transition from Local Anodic Oxidation to Electrical Breakdown During Nanoscale Atomic Force Microscopy Electric Lithography of Highly Oriented Pyrolytic Graphite

“…Atomic force microscopy (AFM) electric machining or lithography is one of the top-down nanofabrication methods that has attracted growing interest due to its superior advantages of low cost, high flexibility, high accuracy, and in situ measurement and characterization after fabrication. It has been used to fabricate or pattern a broad variety of sample materials, such as conductive metal films (Hirooka et al, 2004; Rosa & Liang, 2009; Kwon et al, 2012), carbon-based materials (Park et al, 2002; Vasić et al, 2013; Yang & Zhao, 2013), and semi-conductive samples (Legrand et al, 2002; Dehzangi et al, 2012; Rouhi et al, 2012). The capabilities of AFM electric lithography have recently been shown in the application of fabricating various nanoscale electronic devices (Bo et al, 2002; Takemura & Shirakashi, 2006; Martínez et al, 2010; Espinosa et al, 2015) and sensors (Davis et al, 2003).…”