Quick search Find article
Quick search
Find article

Fabrication of high aspect ratio metal nanotips by nanosecond pulse laser melting

Bo Cui1, Lin Wu2 and Stephen Y Chou1

Show affiliations


The authors have developed an approach to fabricate sharp and high aspect ratio metal tips using nanosecond pulse laser melting. A quartz wafer covered with a thin chromium (Cr) film was placed on top of a second wafer with a sub-micrometer gap between them and the Cr film facing the second wafer. Then an excimer laser pulse (308 nm wavelength, 20 ns pulse duration) was shone from the back of the quartz wafer and melted the Cr film momentarily (several hundred nanoseconds). It is found that the molten Cr films can self-form discrete metal pillars connecting the two wafers. After separating the two wafers, nanotips were formed at the broken pillar necks. The sharpest tip achieved has an apex diameter 10 nm and height 180 nm. The self-formation of Cr pillars between the two wafers was attributed to the attractive electrostatic force caused by the work function difference of two wafers that were in close proximity. This technique could be extended to other metals, and a periodic uniform tip array could be obtained by pre-patterning the metal into identical isolated mesas and precisely controlling the gap between the two wafers.


PACS

81.07.-b Nanoscale materials and structures: fabrication and characterization

73.30.+y Surface double layers, Schottky barriers, and work functions

81.16.Mk Laser-assisted deposition

Subjects

Surfaces, interfaces and thin films

Nanoscale science and low-D systems

Dates

Issue 34 (27 August 2008)

Received 16 April 2008, in final form 18 June 2008

Published 15 July 2008



  1. Fabrication of high aspect ratio metal nanotips by nanosecond pulse laser melting

    Bo Cui et al 2008 Nanotechnology 19 345303

  2. Electrostatic deposition of graphene

    Anton N Sidorov et al 2007 Nanotechnology 18 135301

  3. Effects of the interface between two Lennard-Jones crystals on the lattice vibrations: a molecular dynamics study

    John W Lyver IV and Estela Blaisten-Barojas 2009 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 21 345402

  4. Anticorrelated electrons from weak recollisions in nonsequential double ionization

    S L Haan et al 2008 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 41 211002

  5. On the stress tensor for asymptotically flat gravity

    Robert B Mann et al 2008 Class. Quantum Grav. 25 225019

  6. PAMELA and indirect dark matter searches

    M Boezio et al 2009 New J. Phys. 11 105023

  7. Reversible, reagentless solubility changes in phosphatidylcholine-stabilized gold nanoparticles

    Marilyn R Mackiewicz et al 2008 Nanotechnology 19 115607

  8. Statistics of geodesics in large quadrangulations

    J Bouttier and E Guitter 2008 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 41 145001

  9. Improved search for galactic white-dwarf binaries in Mock LISA Data Challenge 1B using an {\cal F} -statistic template bank

    John T Whelan et al 2008 Class. Quantum Grav. 25 184029

  10. An energetic (e, 2e) reaction away from the Bethe ridge: recoil versus binary

    A S Kheifets et al 2009 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 42 165204

View by subject




Export








Please login to access our web services, or create an account if you don't yet have one.

You must have cookies enabled in your web browser to be able to login.

Username
Password

Forgotten your password? Get a new one here.