MINAFAB Processiong equipments

Dip Pen Nanolithography System

Technical characteristics:

It allows the drawing of doth and lines with sizes as small as 20 nm under controlled conditions. Complex figures may also be realized.

Description

Is a nanolithography system that „prints” and „ink” directly on the substrate. The size of the geometrical features can vary from few tens of nanometers (in best conditions – 20 nm) up to several microns. It allows both a bottom-up approach and a top-down one when contructing the nanostructures. The working principle is that of wetting an AFM-type cantilever with an “ink” and writing down onto a substrate, similar with an ink pen that writes on a paper. The process is serial and is quite slow, but can be highly parallelized by using 2D arrays of cantilevers (55,000 such cantilevers on an array) and thus becomes efficient from the speed and throughoutput points of view. Many materials can be used as “inks”, as are solutions of polymers, small organic molecules, sol-gel precursors, macromolecules, nanoparticle colloids.

Seting-up the system. Left monitor: used for
working with the CAD-like software that
controols the system; right monitor (orange):
real-time imaging of the cantilever tip;
extreme right (blue): the NScriptorTM system.
The window of the environmental
chamber is open.

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Applications:

  • surface functionalization (with direct liaison to proteomics, DNA recognition, virus identification);
  • photolithographic masks correction;
  • molecular electronics;
  • realization of master stamps for NIL (Nanoimprint lithography);
  • novel devices (photonic and electronic);

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Results:

  • It is newly put into function. We are still in te training period. However, some results are obtained, as seen in the figure.


 The logo of the National Institute of Microtechnology – Bucharest written with MHA (16 – Mercaptohexadecanoic Acid) on Gold substrate. Image size is of 5 microns x 5 microns, the width of the letters is of 115 nm while the dot on “i” radius is of 180 nm. The image was read at an angle of 100.

Partneship:

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Application scientist: dr. phys. Gabriel Moagar-Poladian[email protected]

 

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Last update:March 5, 2012