The evolution of fountain pen nanolithography: Controlled multi-probe delivery of liquids and gases

摘要

The field of ambient chemical nanolithography technologies was born in 1999 with two papers. One paper was based on the dip pen concept where to achieve the smallest writing dimensions a dry molecular ink was coated on an atomic force microscopy-like probe [1]. This method was called dip pen nanolithography (DPN). A second paper was based on the concept of a fountain pen [2] and fully employed atomic force microscopy (AFM) and its feedback mechanisms but the writing element used was a nanopipette. This paper focuses on fountain pen nanolithography (FPN) and its evolution into a powerful generally applicable chemical writing method on many length scales with many surfaces and utilizing a wide variety of inks, including gases.