Formation of Si nanostructure using size reduction technique

Abstract

A simple method for the fabrication of nanogaps using conventional photolithography combined with pattern-size reduction techniques is presented. Silicon material is used to fabricate the nanogap structure and gold is used for the electrode. Two chrome masks are proposed to complete this work, the first mask for the nanogap pattern and a second mask for the electrode. With this technique, there are no principal limitations to fabricating nanostructures with different layouts down to several different nanometer dimensions. In this work, the proposed method is experimentally demonstrated by preparing the nanogaps on a Si–SiO2 substrate. The optical characterization that is applied to check the nanogap structure is by using the scanning electron microscope (SEM).