Direct fabrication of nanowires in an electron microscope

Electron-beam-induced deposition (EBID) is a potentially fast and resistless deposition technique which might overcome the fundamental resolution limits of conventional electron-beam lithography. We advance the understanding of the EBID process by simulating the structure growth. The merit of our model is that it explains the shapes of structures grown by EBID quantitatively. It also predicts the possibility to directly fabricate structures with lateral sizes smaller than 10 nm and points out the ideal conditions to achieve this goal. We verify these predictions by fabricating sub-10-nm lines and dots in a state-of-the-art scanning transmission electron microscope. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.