Directed Fabrication of Ceramic Nanostructures on Fragile Substrates Using Soft-electron Beam Lithography (soft-eBL)

We demonstrate the use of a facile nanopatterning scheme known as soft electron beam lithography (soft-eBL) to fabricate and site specifically position a variety of functional ceramic nanostructures onto two fragile substrates: a 75-nm-thick electron-transparent silicon nitride membrane and suspende...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on nanotechnology 2008-05, Vol.7 (3), p.338-343
Main Authors: Donthu, S., Alem, N., Zixiao Pan, Shu-You Li, Shekhawat, G., Dravid, V., Benkstein, K.D., Semancik, S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied sciences
Atom optics
Atomic force microscopy
Biomembranes
Ceramic nanopatterns
Ceramics
Electron beam lithography
Electron optics
Electronics
Exact sciences and technology
Fabrication
gas sensors
General equipment and techniques
Instruments, apparatus, components and techniques common to several branches of physics and astronomy
Lithography
Membranes
Micro- and nanoelectromechanical devices (mems/nems)
Microelectromechanical systems
Microelectronic fabrication (materials and surfaces technology)
microhotplates
Nanocomposites
Nanomaterials
Nanostructure
Nanostructures
nitride membranes
Optical microscopy
Physics
Scanning electron microscopy
Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices
Sensors (chemical, optical, electrical, movement, gas, etc.)
remote sensing
soft-electron beam lithography (soft-eBL)
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Summary:We demonstrate the use of a facile nanopatterning scheme known as soft electron beam lithography (soft-eBL) to fabricate and site specifically position a variety of functional ceramic nanostructures onto two fragile substrates: a 75-nm-thick electron-transparent silicon nitride membrane and suspended microhotplates with embedded heaters. The patterned nanostructures on nitride membranes can be readily probed with a variety of characterization tools without any postfabrication sample preparation, allowing observation of the nanostructures in near-pristine condition. We demonstrate this by characterizing the structural, chemical, and optical properties of several ceramic nanostructures patterned on membranes using electron microscopy and surface scanning probe tools such as atomic force microscopy and near- field scanning optical microscopy. We further demonstrate that such nanostructures, upon integration with microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) microhotplate platforms, can function as gas-sensing elements; we evaluate their sensing performance at micromoles per mole target analyte concentration levels.
ISSN:1536-125X
1941-0085
DOI:10.1109/TNANO.2008.917793