Sub-50 nm patterning of functional oxides by soft lithographic edge printing

Abstract

We report a fast, versatile and reproducible method to make arbitrary nanoscale patterns of functional metal oxides by edge transfer printing of aqueous metal-loaded water-soluble polyacrylic acid (PAA) solutions on silicon. Patterns of ZnO, CuO, NiO and Fe₂O₃ with lateral dimensions below 50 nm were realized. The process uses elastomeric PDMS stamps with microscale feature sizes to fabricate nanoscale patterns, so that stamp deformation problems are minimized despite the high resolution.