HIGH-RESOLUTION ELECTRON-BEAM-INDUCED DEPOSITION

This article gives an introduction to the principles and practices of high-resolution electron-beam-induced deposition (EBID). In EBID, a small focused electron beam is used to locally dissociate a precursor onto the surface of a substrate giving rise to a small deposit. Recently it has been discovered that the size of the deposited structure can be as small as one nanometer allowing EBID to be used to fabricate very small nanostructures of arbitrary shape. EBID provides an alternative to more traditional fabrication methods such as electron beam lithography (EBL) and ion beam induced deposition (IBID). EBID is a direct write technique requiring no pre-deposited resist or development and it can be applied to planar and nonplanar surfaces. This article reviews all aspects of the technique including instrumentation, gas-solid reactions, electron-beam specimen interaction, deposition parameters and deposit composition. Special attention is devoted to factors that must be understood and controlled in order to achieve a resolution of 1 nm. Examples of very small nanostructures fabricated by performing EBID with high-energy subnanometer focused electron beams (200 kV) are demonstrated. The chapter compares and contrasts EBID with other fabrication techniques and discusses current and future applications for the technique.