Deep submicron microcontact printing on planar and curved substrates utilizing focused ion beam fabricated printheads

Focused ion beam (FIB) fabrication of nanostructured "printheads" is used t o extend applications of microcontact printing. Planar and curved printhead s are fabricated with feature sizes less than 100 nm over fields of view of order 1 mm(2), and transferred to target substrates with spatial resolutio n of order 200 nm. Analysis of the mechanical and ion optical stabilities o f the FIB demonstrates that several hours of printhead fabrication time are possible with nanoscale precision. The rapid prototyping capability of thi s approach and the large depth of focus in the FIB enable rapid nanoscale p atterning of a wide range of surface geometries. (C) 2001 American Institut e of Physics.