Nanopatterning of adsorbed 3-aminepropyltriethyoxysilane film by an atomic force microscopy tip

Abstract

In this work, we demonstrated a simple route to pattern nanostructures on the 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) film adsorbed on mica using nanolithography technology. Various nanopatterns (linear, foursquare and triangular) could be achieved by controlling and designing the scanning direction of AFM tip. Also, it was found that the adsorbed APTES film could be induced to rearrange into a bilayer structure. The parameters for the formation of nanostructures were investigated by contact mode atomic force microscopy (AFM). The results indicated that the height of the nanopatterns built on the adsorbed film increased with the decrease of the depth of a tip pushed in. The driving force for the formation of nanopatterns is the combination of the capillarity and inducement action of a tip to APTES molecules. The results presented in this work will improve our understanding to the formation process of short-chain alkoxysilane molecular bilayer and multilayer on mica in a position-selective way.