Electron-beam lithography, alternative

An alternative is to use electron beam lithography, whose basic resolution is of order 4 A. However, e-beam lithography is a serial addressing system, rather than a parallel system, so that we must write a 2D image as a series of lines, rather than a 2D pattern, and this takes a much longer time. 

Mechanical removal of adsorbates offers an alternative approach that also avoids all of the complications and expense associated with electron beam lithography. At elevated loads, an AFM tip may be used to physically displace alkylthiolates from a SAM, resulting in the formation of a molecular trench without removal of the underlying gold atoms (Figure 11). If the operation is carried out under an ethanolic solution of a second thiol, then the scratch... 

Electron beam lithography This technique was developed soon after the development of scanning electron microscopy in 1955 and offers an attractive alternative to the X-ray and UV-lithography (Schmidt et al. 2006 Guillen et al. 1994). Electron beam lithography (EBL) offers higher patterning resolution since the... 

Electron beam lithography has also been used to control the location of a monolayer of PS-b-P2VP micelles loaded with metal precursors. An electron beam resist deposited on a substrate is patterned, and then the metal-loaded micelles are spin coated on top on the patterned film. When the electron beam resist is removed, micelles deposited on the resist are selectively removed, and then the remaining patterned micelles are etched away to leave behind patterned metal dots. Alternatively, a monolayer of metal-loaded micelles can be used as a negative-tone electron beam resist, with written patterns only a few micelles wide, 200 nm. ... 

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