AVS 46th International Symposium
    Nanometer-scale Science and Technology Division Monday Sessions
       Session NS-MoM

Paper NS-MoM10
Fabrication of Nanostructures by Laser Focusing of Fe Atoms

Monday, October 25, 1999, 11:20 am, Room 6C

Session: Nanotechnology
Presenter: R.C.M. Bosch, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Authors: R.C.M. Bosch, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
K. van Leeuwen, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
H.C.W. Beijerinck, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
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We present an improved atom lithography method for the production of nanomagnetic wires and dots having well defined shape and separation. It is based on laser manipulated deposition of a supersonic beam of Fe atoms. The nodes of a 372 nm standing light wave act as a perfect lens for an incoming monochromatic parallel atomic Fe beam. The feature size of the deposited structures is therefore first of all limited by the quality of the incoming beam, and secondly by spherical aberration. A parallel beam is obtained by well known laser cooling techniques, but our improvement lies in the reduction of chromatic aberration by using a self-developed Fe evaporation source seeded with high pressure argon gas. The mixture will expand supersonically and due to adiabatic cooling it is in principle possible to obtain a beam with an axial velocity spread of less than 10%. The problem of spherical aberration will be solved with beam masking: a transmission grating with 100 nm slit sizes upstream of the standing wave allows only atoms near the nodes to be deposited. With the presented method we expect to reduce the structure sizes produced by conventional atom lithography methods and to break the 10 nm limit.