Physical Self-Assembly And Nano-Patterning

Abstract

AbstractIt is known that oblique angle deposition (or glancing angle deposition) can create 3D architectures that are otherwise difficult to produce using the conventional lithographic techniques. The technique relies on a self-assembly mechanism originated from a physical shadowing effect during deposition. In this paper we show examples of 3D nanostructures obtained by this oblique angle deposition on a templated substrate with regularly spaced pillar seeds. We show that common to this technique is the phenomenon of side-way growth on the seeds. The side-way growth leads to a fan-like structure at the initial stages of growth if the incident oblique angle is fixed during growth. Simulations based on a steering effect due to the attractive force between the incoming atom and the existing atoms on the surface produce a fanlike structure similar to that observed experimentally. We show that a two-phase substrate rotation scheme during deposition can dramatically reduce this fan-out effect and can lead to uniform and isolated columns.