Articles you may be interested inResistivity change of the diamondlike carbon, deposited by focused-ion-beam chemical vapor deposition, induced by the annealing treatment Conductive nanowires were deposited by a focused gallium ion beam using W͑CO͒ 6 and ͑CH 3 ͒ 3 CH 3 C 5 H 4 Pt as precursors. An in situ electrical treatment can substantially modify the structure and resistivity of these nanowires. This treatment consists in applying voltage ramps to the wire, leading to a high current density that induces wire annealing. The nanowires are deposited by focused ion-beam-induced deposition on two kinds of customized supports based on diamondlike carbon or Si 3 N 4 membranes, particularly suitable for electrical tests and transmission electron microscopy characterization. In the case of tungsten wires, the treatment induces an improvement of the resistivity due to both gallium contamination removal and wire crystallization, which occurs at high temperature. The treatment leads to low-resistivity ͑50 ⍀ cm͒ polycrystalline tungsten nanowires. For platinum wires, the treatment induces an increase of resistivity. In fact, this treated wire was composed of conductive droplets ͑platinum and PtGa 2 ͒ connected by a wire with poor conductivity.

The process of local-field-induced deposition on a surface facing a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) tip has been investigated for several tip-sample systems. Applying negative voltage pulses, atoms can be transferred from the STM tip to the surface and, for example, platinum dots and lines have been drawn on gold or silicon samples by this technique. In this latter case, a discussion is proposed on growth mechanisms involved in field-induced deposition processes on the basis of growth kinetics studies. When positive voltage pulses are applied to a silicon sample placed in tunneling conditions with a STM tip, silicon nanofeatures are elaborated on the substrate surface by field-enhanced surface diffusion of silicon atoms.

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An innovative experimental setup, PELIICAEN, allowing the modification of materials and the study of the effects induced by multiply charged ion beams at the nanoscale is presented. This ultra-high vacuum (below 5 × 10 mbar) apparatus is equipped with a focused ion beam column using multiply charged ions and a scanning electron microscope developed by Orsay Physics, as well as a scanning probe microscope. The dual beam approach coupled to the scanning probe microscope achieves nanometer scale in situ topological analysis of the surface modifications induced by the ion beams. Preliminary results using the different on-line characterization techniques to study the formation of nano-hillocks on silicon and mica substrates are presented to illustrate the performances of the setup.

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