Laser expulsion of an organic molecular nanojet from a spatially confined domain

Functional organic molecules have been manipulated into fluorescent feature s as small as 450 nm on a polymer film using a method derived from laser ab lation and laser implantation. The technique utilizes a piezodriver to posi tion a pipette, having a 100 nm aperture and doped at the tip with organic molecules, tens of nanometers above a polymer film. The pipette is subseque ntly irradiated using 3 ns (full width at half maximum) laser pulses guided down to the tip by a fiber optic. This method of ablation confinement give s fine spatial control for placing functional organic molecules in a design ated region and will have applications in optoelectronics. It could also be applied to drug delivery or biotechnology, because in principle, different molecules of diverse function can be manipulated in the same way for vario us purposes. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.