PATTERN GENERATION WITH CESIUM ATOMIC-BEAMS AT NANOMETER SCALES

We have demonstrated that a cesium atomic beam can be used to pattern a gold surface using a self assembling monolayer (SAM) as a resist. A 12.5 mu m period mesh was used as a proximity mask for the atomic beam . The cesium atoms locally change the wetability of the SAM, which all ows a wet etching reagent to remove the underlying gold in the exposed regions. An edge resolution of better than 100 nm was obtained. The e xperiment suggests that this method can either be used as a sensitive position detector with nanometer resolution in atom optics, or for nan ostructuring in a resist technique.