Temperature-dependence of ink transport during thermal dip-pen nanolithography

Sungwook Chung, Jonathan R. Felts, Debin Wang, William P. King, James J. De Yoreo

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We investigate the control of tip temperature on feature size during dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) of mercaptohexadecanoic acid (MHA) on Au. Heated atomic force microscopy (AFM) probes operated between 25 °C and 50 °C wrote nanostructures of MHA for various dwell times and tip speeds. The feature size exhibited an exponential dependence on tip temperature with an apparent activation barrier of 165 kJ/mol. Analysis of the ink transfer process shows that, while ∼1/3 of the barrier is from ink dissolution into the meniscus, the rest reflects the barrier to adsorption onto the growing feature, a process that has been ignored in previous DPN models.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number193101
JournalApplied Physics Letters
Volume99
Issue number19
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 7 2011

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

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