Atom lithography with a cold, metastable neon beam

We study different aspects of atom lithography with metastable neon atoms. Proximity printing of stencil masks is used to test suitable resists that a re sensitive to the internal energy of the atoms, including dodecanethiols on gold and octadecyltrichlorosilanes grown on a SiO2 surface. As an exampl e of patterning the atomic beam with laser light, we create parallel line s tructures on the surface with a periodicity of half the laser wavelength by locally de-exciting the atoms in a standing quenching wave.