Deliberately creating structures having nanometer sizes is a scientific and technical challenge that has been addressed for several centuries. Clearly, physicists are able to combine atoms, chemists create molecules and biologists create biomolecules with sizes on the nanometer scale. A greater challenge is to engineer structures in the mesoscopic scale of 10 - 1000 nm. Methods for creating mesoscopic structures include optical lithography, and ebeam lithography. Although successful, these techniques are limited in their use to few researchers because of the expense, greater than 1 million
dollars. With the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), it is now possible to create mesoscopic sized devices for a fraction of the cost of optical and ebeam techniques.
The atomic force microscope is the most widely used scanning probe instrument in nanoscience and nanotechnology. The AFM combines surface profilometry and scanning tunneling microscopy and can operate under ambient conditions on both insulating and conducting materials. In general, the AFM can be used to measure, modify, or manipulate surface structures. This technical note focuses on surface modification - that is, nano-manufacturing processes. The AFM is well suited for R&D and "proof-of-concept" demonstrations of fabrication and patterning techniques in the nanoscale regime.
Surface structures can be modified by a passive probe (e.g. surface indentation) or by several types of active probes. Active probes could employ electrical, chemical, optical, or diffusion processes to change the surface.
- Solid-state nanoresists
- Molecular electronics - organic and bio-organic circuits
- High-density optical memory
Crystallization - colloidal
crystals, biostructures
- Nanoprinted catalysts
- Ultra-high density oligonucleotide arrays - gene chips,
sequencing, pharmaceutical screening
- Micro- and nanofluidics
- Ultra-small, sensitive selective sensors
- Cryptography
