Fabrication of molecular-scale patterns with chemically tunable functionalities

This paper presents a scalable hybrid molecular nanofabrication approach of sub-10 nm patterns with functionalized surfaces by combining ldquobottom-uprdquo surface initiated polymerization (SIP) with ldquotop-downrdquo electron beam lithography (EBL). This prototype molecular nanofabrication is based on the concept of nanolithography-based molecular manipulation (NMM). The strategy is to apply free-radical SIP (ldquobottom-uprdquo) to the non-molecularly engineered and chemically inert nano-patterns prepared by ldquotop-downrdquo nanolithography, e.g. EBL. This integration can minimize feature sizes to molecular length scales (sub-10 nm) and simultaneously tune the surface chemistry of the nano-patterns through functional polymer brushes. In this work, 4 nm nanostructures have been obtained which are chemically functionalized by poly(vinyl pyridine) (PVP).