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    The patterning toolbox FIB-o-mat: Exploiting the full potential of focused helium ions for nanofabrication
    (Frankfurt, M. : Beilstein-Institut zur Förderung der Chemischen Wissenschaften, 2021) Deinhart, Victor; Kern, Lisa-Marie; Kirchhof, Jan N.; Juergensen, Sabrina; Sturm, Joris; Krauss, Enno; Feichtner, Thorsten; Kovalchuk, Sviatoslav; Schneider, Michael; Engel, Dieter; Pfau, Bastian; Hecht, Bert; Bolotin, Kirill I.; Reich, Stephanie; Höflich, Katja
    Focused beams of helium ions are a powerful tool for high-fidelity machining with spatial precision below 5 nm. Achieving such a high patterning precision over large areas and for different materials in a reproducible manner, however, is not trivial. Here, we introduce the Python toolbox FIB-o-mat for automated pattern creation and optimization, providing full flexibility to accomplish demanding patterning tasks. FIB-o-mat offers high-level pattern creation, enabling high-fidelity large-area patterning and systematic variations in geometry and raster settings. It also offers low-level beam path creation, providing full control over the beam movement and including sophisticated optimization tools. Three applications showcasing the potential of He ion beam nanofabrication for two-dimensional material systems and devices using FIB-o-mat are presented.
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    Strongly coupled, high-quality plasmonic dimer antennas fabricated using a sketch-and-peel technique
    (Berlin : de Gruyter, 2020) Gittinger, Moritz; Höflich, Katja; Smirnov, Vladimir; Kollmann, Heiko; Lienau, Christoph; Silies, Martin
    A combination of helium- and gallium-ion beam milling together with a fast and reliable sketch-and-peel technique is used to fabricate gold nanorod dimer antennas with an excellent quality factor and with gap distances of less than 6 nm. The high fabrication quality of the sketch-and-peel technique compared to a conventional ion beam milling technique is proven by polarisation-resolved linear dark-field spectromicroscopy of isolated dimer antennas. We demonstrate a strong coupling of the two antenna arms for both fabrication techniques, with a quality factor of more than 14, close to the theoretical limit, for the sketch-and-peel-produced antennas compared to only 6 for the conventional fabrication process. The obtained results on the strong coupling of the plasmonic dimer antennas are supported by finite-difference time-domain simulations of the light-dimer antenna interaction. The presented fabrication technique enables the rapid fabrication of large-scale plasmonic or dielectric nanostructures arrays and metasurfaces with single-digit nanometer scale milling accuracy. © 2020 Christoph Lienau, Martin Silies et al., published by De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston.
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    Spatially controlled epitaxial growth of 2D heterostructures via defect engineering using a focused He ion beam
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2021) Heilmann, Martin; Deinhart, Victor; Tahraoui, Abbes; Höflich, Katja; Lopes, J. Marcelo J.
    The combination of two-dimensional (2D) materials into heterostructures enables the formation of atomically thin devices with designed properties. To achieve a high-density, bottom-up integration, the growth of these 2D heterostructures via van der Waals epitaxy (vdWE) is an attractive alternative to the currently mostly employed mechanical transfer, which is problematic in terms of scaling and reproducibility. Controlling the location of the nuclei formation remains a key challenge in vdWE. Here, a focused He ion beam is used to deterministically place defects in graphene substrates, which serve as preferential nucleation sites for the growth of insulating, 2D hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). Therewith a mask-free, selective-area vdWE (SAvdWE) is demonstrated, in which nucleation yield and crystal quality of h-BN are controlled by the ion beam parameters used for defect formation. Moreover, h-BN grown via SAvdWE is shown to exhibit electron tunneling characteristics comparable to those of mechanically transferred layers, thereby lying the foundation for a reliable, high-density array fabrication of 2D heterostructures for device integration via defect engineering in 2D substrates.