Fabrication of silicon submicrometer ribbons by glancing angle deposition

Abstract

Ribbon structures on the submicrometer scale are of interest for the development of nanodevices in various fields. We fabricate periodic arrays of silicon ribbons using electron beam lithography and thin film deposition at highly oblique incident angles. A periodicity of 1 µm and a line width less than 100 nm is used for the lithographically prepatterned substrate seed layers to ensure that the planar fill factor was less than the equilibrium volume fill factor of the thin film. Individual ribbons exhibit a width of approximately 1.8 µm, controlled by the length of deposition, and a thickness of approximately 100 nm. The ribbons fabricated for this experiment have a length of 4 mm, and exhibit an amorphous structure with scattered crystallites throughout the matrix.