2018 journal article

Development and Characterization of Ultrasonic Vibration Assisted Nanomachining Process for Three-Dimensional Nanofabrication

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NANOTECHNOLOGY, 17(3), 559–566.

By: J. Deng *, J. Dong n  & P. Cohen n 

co-author countries: United States of America πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ
author keywords: 3-D Nanomachining; tip-based nanofabrication; atomic force microscope (AFM); ultrasonic vibration assisted nanomachining
Source: Web Of Science
Added: August 6, 2018

This paper develops and characterizes a three-dimensional (3-D) nanofabrication process using ultrasonic vibration assisted nanomachining based on an atomic force microscope (AFM). The superiorities of height control over force control in the process are explained and are demonstrated by the fabrication results. Three factors impacting actual feature depths are investigated, including the ultrasonic z-vibrational amplitude, the assigned base feature depth, and the machining speed. 3-D nanostructures with continuous height variations were successfully fabricated on polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) films with the feature height manipulated through controlling the absolute height of the cantilever tip in AFM. By selecting machining parameters based on characterizations, feature dimensions can be controlled as desired values within small variances. The capability of transferring 3-D nanostructures from PMMA films to silicon substrates is further explored in this paper. After selecting recipes of the reactive ion etching process, 3-D nanostructures are successfully transferred to silicon substrates with controllable selectivity. The reported ultrasonic vibration assisted nanomachining process in height control provides a robust approach of fabricating 3-D nanostructures.