Fabrication of nanometer size gaps on an electrode

摘要

A shadow mask method to fabricate electrodes with nanometer scale separation utilizes nanotubes (NTs). Metal wires with gaps are made by incorporating multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) or single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) (or bundles thereof) into a tri-layer electron beam lithography process. The simple, highly controllable, and scaleable method can be used to make gaps with widths between 1 and 100 nm. Electronic transport measurements performed on individual SWNTs bridge nanogaps smaller than 30 nm. Metallic SWNTs exhibit quantum dot behavior with an 80 meV charging energy and a 20 meV energy level splitting. Semiconducting SWNTs show an anomalous field effect transistor behavior.