Abstract
We report the fabrication and characterization of copper microelectrodes obtained by a homemade lithography technique and after gold electroless deposition. For the fabrication, planes consisting of arrays of electrodes (black in color) with bow tie shape were designed and printed on a transparent paper (Canson ltd.). Using an embroidery frame with a silk fabric, a photographic emulsion was spread on the silk and simultaneously pressing the Canson paper on it. The system was introduced into a closed box and exposed with a UV light. The designed electrode templates prevented direct exposition of the UV light over copper films and indelible ink was spread over it. After the ink was dried, the copper film is immersed into ferric acid to attack the uncovered copper parts (where there is no ink). In this way, we obtained copper electrodes with initial gap separation of ~142μm and subsequently, they followed electroless deposition of gold to make the copper electrodes to contact. For the characterization, electrical measurements were performed. They present ohmic resistance values in the order of 106 Ω produced by surface scattering of the electrons within the gold microwire and enhanced by oxidation of the copper electrodes.
Highlights
The fabrication of symmetrical metal electrodes separated by a few nanometers is of great importance for micro,nano- and molecular-electronics [1]
In this work we report a homemade lithography technique for the fabrication of copper electrode pairs and their electroless deposition with gold
We demonstrate that it is possible to electroless deposit gold on copper electrodes and to put them into contact
Summary
The fabrication of symmetrical metal electrodes separated by a few nanometers is of great importance for micro- ,nano- and molecular-electronics [1]. Crystals, DNA, proteins and other nanostructures have been placed in the nanogap electrodes to pursue generation of nano-devices [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] For this purpose, during the last two decades, a lot of efforts have been devoted to develop techniques for obtaining micro- and nanogap electrodes. We demonstrate that it is possible to electroless deposit gold on copper electrodes and to put them into contact This happened in spite that the initial distance gap obtained by our homemade lithography is thousand times larger than the average distance achieved by other sophisticated techniques [12]. Nanogaps could probably get through the application of techniques for breaking our microwire as is the electromigration-induced break junction (EIBJ technique)
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