Advances in gas-mediated electron beam-induced etching and related material processing techniques

Abstract

Electron beam induced etching (EBIE) has traditionally been used for top-down, direct-write, chemical dry etching and iterative editing of materials. The present article reviews recent advances in EBIE modeling and emerging applications, with an emphasis on use cases in which the approaches that have conventionally been used to realize EBIE are instead used for material analysis, surface functionalization, or bottom-up growth of nanostructured materials. Such applications are used to highlight the shortcomings of existing quantitative EBIE models, and to identify physico-chemical phenomena that must be accounted for in order to enable full exploitation and predictive modeling of EBIE and related electron beam fabrication techniques.

Electron-Beam-Induced Deposition as a Technique for Analysis of Precursor Molecule Diffusion Barriers and Prefactors

“…This is important because the models play a key role in improving the understanding and capabilities of these nanofabrication techniques, but are often limited by inadequate knowledge of input parameters such as adsorption and diffusion energies. 11 The use of EBID and EBIE as robust, reliable adsorbate characterization techniques requires careful quantitative analysis of the underlying mechanisms in order to identify, explain and eliminate potential artefacts. For example, we recently used an accurate hybrid continuum-Monte Carlo simulation of EBID to show that the precursor molecule adsorption energy (E a ) and desorption attempt frequency (k 0 ) can be deduced by Arrhenius analysis of deposition rates only if EBID is performed under appropriate conditions.…”

“…[1][2][3][4] It has been used to fabricate nanostructures such as optical nanoantennas, 5,6 nano-scale tunneling electrodes, 7 magnetic nanowires 8 and electrical contacts to individual nanoribbons 9 and nanotubes. 10 In addition to nanofabrication, EBID (and the related technique of electron beam induced etching 1,11 ) can also be used as analysis techniques for the analysis of the adsorbates (i.e. reagents) used in the deposition and etch reactions.…”

Dynamic Pattern Formation in Electron-Beam-Induced Etching

“…H 2 O) and thus generate reactive fragments (O * ) which react with surface atoms (C) to produce volatile molecules (CO) that desorb spontaneously, giving rise to localized chemical etching. In the specific case of H 2 O EBIE of diamond, a possible pathway in this framework is the following [1,2]:…”

“…The patterns can be exploited in controlled wetting, optical structuring and other emerging applications that require nano and micro-scale surface texturing of a wide bandgap material. Electron beam induced etching (EBIE) [1,2] is a high resolution, single step, direct-write nanofabrication technique in which a precursor gas and an electron beam are used to realize etching. To date, EBIE has been used to study electron interactions with solids and adsorbates, and to machine a wide range of materials using etch precursors such as oxygen, water, ammonia, nitrogen trifluoride, xenon difluoride and chlorine.…”

Electron beam induced etching of carbon

“…Gas-mediated electron beam induced etching 8,9 (EBIE) is increasingly being used for rapid prototyping of functional structures in graphene 10 and diamond 11 as it eliminates damage to the material produced by masking and ion implantation.…”