Maskless X-Ray Writing of Electrical Devices on a Superconducting Oxide with Nanometer Resolution and Online Process Monitoring

X-ray nanofabrication has so far been usually limited to mask methods involving photoresist impression and subsequent etching. Herein we show that an innovative maskless X-ray nanopatterning approach allows writing electrical devices with nanometer feature size. In particular we fabricated a Josephs...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2017-08, Vol.7 (1), p.9066-9066, Article 9066
Main Authors: Mino, Lorenzo, Bonino, Valentina, Agostino, Angelo, Prestipino, Carmelo, Borfecchia, Elisa, Lamberti, Carlo, Operti, Lorenza, Fretto, Matteo, De Leo, Natascia, Truccato, Marco
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/301/930/1032
639/925/927/1064
Chemical Sciences
Contamination
Crystal structure
Electrical properties
Etching
Geometry
Humanities and Social Sciences
Ion beams
multidisciplinary
Nanopatterning
Polymethyl methacrylate
Radiation
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Semiconductors
Silicon nitride
X-rays
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Summary:X-ray nanofabrication has so far been usually limited to mask methods involving photoresist impression and subsequent etching. Herein we show that an innovative maskless X-ray nanopatterning approach allows writing electrical devices with nanometer feature size. In particular we fabricated a Josephson device on a Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+δ (Bi-2212) superconducting oxide micro-crystal by drawing two single lines of only 50 nm in width using a 17.4 keV synchrotron nano-beam. A precise control of the fabrication process was achieved by monitoring in situ the variations of the device electrical resistance during X-ray irradiation, thus finely tuning the irradiation time to drive the material into a non-superconducting state only in the irradiated regions, without significantly perturbing the crystal structure. Time-dependent finite element model simulations show that a possible microscopic origin of this effect can be related to the instantaneous temperature increase induced by the intense synchrotron picosecond X-ray pulses. These results prove that a conceptually new patterning method for oxide electrical devices, based on the local change of electrical properties, is actually possible with potential advantages in terms of heat dissipation, chemical contamination, miniaturization and high aspect ratio of the devices.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-017-09443-3