TY - JOUR
AU - S Aggarwal
AU - S.B Ogale
AU - C.S Ganpule
AU - S.R Shinde
AU - V.A Novikov
AU - A.P Monga
AU - M.R Burr
AU - Ramamoorthy Ramesh
AU - V Ballarotto
AU - E.D Williams
AB - A prominent theme in inorganic materials research is the creation of uniformly flat thin films and heterostructures over large wafers, which can subsequently be lithographically processed into functional devices. This letter proposes an approach that will lead to thin film topographies that are directly counter to the above-mentioned philosophy. Recent years have witnessed considerable research activity in the area of self-assembly of materials, stimulated by observations of self-organized behavior in biological systems. We have fabricated uniform arrays of nonplanar surface features by a spontaneous assembly process involving the oxidation of simple metals, especially under constrained conditions on a variety of substrates, including glass and Si. In this letter we demonstrate the pervasiveness of this process through examples involving the oxidation of Pd, Cu, Fe, and In. The feature sizes can be controlled through the grain size and thickness of the starting metal thin film. Finally, we demonstrate how such submicron scale arrays can serve as templates for the design and development of self-assembled, nanoelectronic devices. © 2001 American Institute of Physics.
BT - Applied Physics Letters
DO - 10.1063/1.1352666
LA - eng
M1 - 10
N1 - cited By 32
N2 - A prominent theme in inorganic materials research is the creation of uniformly flat thin films and heterostructures over large wafers, which can subsequently be lithographically processed into functional devices. This letter proposes an approach that will lead to thin film topographies that are directly counter to the above-mentioned philosophy. Recent years have witnessed considerable research activity in the area of self-assembly of materials, stimulated by observations of self-organized behavior in biological systems. We have fabricated uniform arrays of nonplanar surface features by a spontaneous assembly process involving the oxidation of simple metals, especially under constrained conditions on a variety of substrates, including glass and Si. In this letter we demonstrate the pervasiveness of this process through examples involving the oxidation of Pd, Cu, Fe, and In. The feature sizes can be controlled through the grain size and thickness of the starting metal thin film. Finally, we demonstrate how such submicron scale arrays can serve as templates for the design and development of self-assembled, nanoelectronic devices. © 2001 American Institute of Physics.
PY - 2001
SP - 1442
EP - 1444
T2 - Applied Physics Letters
TI - Oxide nanostructures through self-assembly
VL - 78
SN - 00036951
ER -