Ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscopy is employed for the nanofabrication and characterization of atomically registered heteromolecular organosilicon nanostructures at room temperature. In the first fabrication step, feedback controlled lithography (FCL) is used to pattern individual 2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-1-piperidinyloxy (TEMPO) free radical molecules at opposite ends of the same dimer row on the Si(100)-2×1:H surface. In atomic registration with the first pattern, FCL is subsequently applied for the removal of a single hydrogen atom. The resulting dangling bond templates the spontaneous growth of a styrene chain that is oriented along the underlying dimer row. The styrene chain growth is bounded by the originally patterned TEMPO molecules, thus resulting in a heteromolecular organosilicon nanostructure. The demonstration of multistep FCL suggests that this approach can be widely used for fundamental studies and fabricating prototype devices that require atomically registered organic molecules mounted on silicon surfaces. R. Basu, N. P. Guisinger, M. E. Greene, and M. C. Hersam, “Room temperature nanofabrication of atomically registered heteromolecular organosilicon nanostructures using multistep feedback controlled lithography,” Applied Physics Letters 85, 2619 (2004).
Abstract:
Citation:
