Digital image analysis for measuring nanogap distance produced by adhesion lithography

Abstract

A simple digital image analysis for measuring nanogap distance produced by adhesion lithography is proposed. Adhesion lithography produces metal electrodes with sub-15 nm undulated space and μm to mm scale width without using electron beam lithography. Although the process has been rapidly improved in recent years, there has been no generalized procedure to evaluate the nanogap distance. In this study, we propose a procedure to evaluate a nanogap electrode with large width/gap distance ratios (>1000). The procedure is to determine the average distance of nanogap space from the area and the perimeter of the space by the analysis of the grayscale image. This procedure excludes any arbitrariness of the estimation and gives quantitative comparison of nanogap electrodes produced by different processes.