<title>Nanoscale pattern generation with cesium atomic beams and light forces</title>

Abstract

Recently, beams of metastable helium and argon atoms have been used to generate nanoscale patterns [1]. In this method, a thin layer of gold is coated with a self assembling monolayer of alcanethioles (SAM) and then exposed to the atomic beam which was spatially modulated by a mechanical mask. After exposure, etching with a wet gold etching solution transferred the structure of the mask into the gold layer. The achieved edge resolution of the transferred pattern at wazzu sub 100 rim scales suggested that this technique could provide a useful lithography method. Motivated by these results and discussions with colleagues [2], we have investigated the influence of a cesium atomic beam in a similar arrangement [3]. The use of alkali atoms would be desirable because light force methods have been extensively studied with alkali atomic beams, and because light sources are abundant.