A Mild Etch for the Fabrication of Three-Dimensional Nanostructures in Gold

摘要

Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) formed by the adsorption of alkylthiols onto gold surfaces have attracted widespread interest for applications in micro- and nanotechnology.A variety of methods have been developed for patterning SAMs on length scales from the macroscopic to the nanoscopic.Microcontact printing (mu CP) has been used extensively.On nanometer length scales,electron beam lithography and scanning probe lithography techniques,such as dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) and nanograftinganoshaving,have attracted significant interest.Recently,we reported a new approach,termed scanning near-field photolithography (SNP),in which a scanning near-field optical microscope,coupled to a UV laser,is used to selectively photooxidize adsorbates,enabling the fabrication of structures significantly smaller than the conventional diffraction limit.