Nondestructive tribochemistry-assisted nanofabrication on GaAs surface

Abstract

A tribochemistry-assisted method has been developed for nondestructive surface nanofabrication on GaAs. Without any applied electric field and post etching, hollow nanostructures can be directly fabricated on GaAs surfaces by sliding a SiO2 microsphere under an ultralow contact pressure in humid air. TEM observation on the cross-section of the fabricated area shows that there is no appreciable plastic deformation under a 4 nm groove, confirming that GaAs can be removed without destruction. Further analysis suggests that the fabrication relies on the tribochemistry with the participation of vapor in humid air. It is proposed that the formation and breakage of GaAs-O-Si bonding bridges are responsible for the removal of GaAs material during the sliding process. As a nondestructive and conductivity-independent method, it will open up new opportunities to fabricate defect-free and well-ordered nucleation positions for quantum dots on GaAs surfaces.

Nondestructive nanofabrication on Si(100) surface by tribochemistry-induced selective etching

“…In addition, the nanochannels free of lattice damage are expected to be applied as the key components in micro/nano fluidic systems 32 , which are widely used in drug delivery, ion transporters, DNA translocators, and so on 33 34 35 36 . The nondestructive tribochemistry-induced nanofabrication method is also available for other chemical reactive surface, such as GaAs, to produce defect-free or well-ordered nanostructures 37 .…”

Effect of crystal plane orientation on tribochemical removal of monocrystalline silicon

“…with a curvature radius of approximately 20 nm and spring constant of around 0.1 N/m37. Before imaging, the AFM chamber was pumped into ~5 × 10 −4 torr vacuum to avoid the influence of adsorbed water film on samples.…”

High‐Throughput Generation of Hierarchical Micro/Nanostructures by Spatial Vibration‐Assisted Diamond Cutting

“…The proposed SVDC diamond cutting is a relatively universal, deterministic, and high‐throughput nanomachining technique capable of massively producing ultrafine multitier hierarchical micro/nanostructures on a wide spectrum of engineering materials. Comparing with other tip‐based top–down mechanical nanomachining which was predominated by AFM machining, a relatively high cutting velocity (about 0.5 mm s −1 in the present study) was commonly used which was about an order higher than that used in AFM machining . Since the diamond tool followed a continuous rotation motion with consistent cutting velocity, the inevitable accelerate and decelerate processes in rater feeding in AFM machining can also be avoided, resulting in much higher machining efficiency and uniformity of the SVDC system.…”

“…The bottom width and height of the marks were determined by the side‐feeding distance and the joint effect of the side‐feeding distance and the tool radius, respectively (Figure h). Essentially, with respect to a given rotation speed in the SVDC, dependences of the generated feature sizes were on the 3 DoF vibration velocity, side‐feeding velocity and geometry of the diamond tool, rather than directly on the relative motion trajectory in conventional tip‐based mechanical nanomachining . This unique structure generation mechanism suggests that there is a rare opportunity for the generation of micro/nanostructures with simultaneous high throughput and high resolution, even by using machining systems with much lower motion resolution.…”

“…In fact, it commonly requires expensive facilities and laborious fabrication steps, and it is difficult to control the etching direction and distribution to construct complex shapes . The tip‐based mechanical nanomachining which is another very promising branch in top–down nanofabrication allows direct generation of complex micro/nanostructures on metal, semiconductive, and polymer materials . It is widely regarded as a more universal and deterministic way for material removal at room environment.…”