A promising lithography technique for future nanotechnology is focused electron beam induced deposition (FEBID). In FEBID, gaseous precursor molecules are introduced in a vacuum system and they adsorb on the surface of the sample. The precursor molecules carry the material that the operator wants to deposit (for instance gold). When the precursor molecules are exposed to electrons, they dissociate and form the desired deposit on the surface. The main advantages of FEBID are that it is a one-step process and that a high resolution can be obtained: we have written features as small as 1 nm.
A major limitation of FEBID is the purity of the deposit. The dissociation of existing precursors is generally incomplete, so that (unwanted) fragments of the molecule are included in the deposit. In this project, you will test new gold and platinum compounds that are expected to perform much better than existing precursors. You will do this with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopes and transmission electron microscopes.
Contact: prof. dr. Jeff de Hosson, dr. w.f.van.dorp@rug.nl.