Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Fabrication of a sub-10 nm silicon nanowire based ethanol sensor using block copolymer lithography

Sozaraj Rasappa, Dipu Borah, Colm C Faulkner, Tarek Lutz, Matthew T Shaw, Justin D Holmes and Michael A Morris



This paper details the fabrication of ultrathin silicon nanowires (SiNWs) on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate as an electrode for the electro-oxidation and sensing of ethanol. The nanowire surfaces were prepared by a block copolymer (BCP) nanolithographic technique using low molecular weight symmetric poly(styrene)- block -poly(methyl methacrylate) (PS- b -PMMA) to create a nanopattern which was transferred to the substrate using plasma etching. The BCP orientation was controlled using a hydroxyl-terminated random polymer brush of poly(styrene)- random -poly(methyl methacrylate) (HO-PS- r -PMMA). TEM cross-sections of the resultant SiNWs indicate an anisotropic etch process with nanowires of sub-10 nm feature size. The SiNWs obtained by etching show high crystallinity and there is no evidence of defect inclusion or amorphous region production as a result of the pattern transfer process. The high density of SiNWs at the substrate surface allowed the fabri...



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