Fabrication of molecular-scale patterns with chemically tunable functionalities

This paper presents a scalable hybrid molecular nanofabrication approach of sub-10 nm patterns with functionalized surfaces by combining “bottom-up” surface initiated polymerization (SIP) with “top-down” electron beam lithography (EBL). This prototype molecular nanofabrication is based on the concept of nanolithography-based molecular manipulation (NMM). The strategy is to apply free-radical SIP (“bottom-up”) to the non-molecularly engineered and chemically inert nano-patterns prepared by “top-down” nanolithography, e.g. EBL. This integration can minimize feature sizes to molecular length scales (sub-10 nm) and simultaneously tune the surface chemistry of the nano-patterns through functional polymer brushes. In this work, 4 nm nanostructures have been obtained which are chemically functionalized by poly(vinyl pyridine) (PVP).