Electron beam nanofabrication of ferromagnetic nanostructures in TEM

Thirunavukkarasu G, M A Mat Yajid, Z Saghi, Y Peng, B J Inkson, M R J Gibbs and G Möbus

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Electron beam (e-beam) fabrication of nanostruc-
tures by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is rapidly
developing into a top-down nanofabrication method for the
sub-5 nm fabrication of structures that cannot usually be re-
alised using resist based lithographic techniques or by the
focused ion beam patterning methods. We describe the us-
age of a variety of e-beam shapes, including point and ellip-
tical line focus, as well as a comparison of LaB6 and field-
emission guns (FEGs), to achieve versatile sculpting of nan-
odot arrays, nanobridges and nanotips. We operate our pat-
terning on free-standing nickel (Ni) thin film laterally con-
nected to a silicon (Si) substrate as well as to free-standing
Ni nanotips, where we achieve a novel three-dimensional
(3D) nano-sculpting methodology.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)205–21
JournalApplied physics A-Materials science & processing
Volume102
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2011

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