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Surfactant-assisted fabrication of free-standing inorganic sheets covering an array of micrometre-sized holes

Nature Materials volume 6, pages 686–691 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Thin inorganic membranes are of importance to a number of applications such as sensing, catalysis and separation. Here, we present a method to fabricate free-standing sheets of various inorganic materials such as C, Si, Pt, Fe and CdSe with thicknesses ranging from a few to a hundred nanometres. First, an array of holes in a flat substrate was uniformly covered by dried-foam-film (DFF) self-standing reversed bilayers of surfactants. As the surfactant bilayers are sufficiently robust to allow deposition of amorphous films, a variety of inorganic films were then fabricated on the DFFs using physical deposition techniques such as sputtering, electron-beam deposition and thermal deposition. The films thus obtained showed improved thermal stability compared with the DFFs. This fabrication method therefore provides a flexible and reliable way to readily produce free-standing inorganic multilayered structures.

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Figure 1: Preparation of free-standing inorganic sheets.
Figure 2: SEM and TEM images of DPC films with a 2-nm-thick Pt layer.
Figure 3: Optical and electron microscopy images of carbon sheets with different thicknesses.
Figure 4: AFM images of a 10-nm-thick carbon sheet deposited on a DPC film.
Figure 5: Residual ratios of 20-nm-thick carbon sheets at different temperatures.
Figure 6: Microscopic characterization of free-standing Si, Te and CdSe sheets.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank K. Kurashima, Materials Analysis Station, NIMS, for his advice on TEM measurements.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Organic Nanomaterials Center, National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan

    Jian Jin, Xinsheng Peng & Izumi Ichinose

  2. Advanced Electronic Materials Center, National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan

    Yutaka Wakayama

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  1. Jian Jin
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  2. Yutaka Wakayama
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  4. Izumi Ichinose
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Contributions

J.J. was responsible for the preparation of dried foam films, thermal deposition of carbon, ion sputtering of Pt and characterization of all inorganic sheets, including Si, Te, Fe, In and CdSe. Y.W. was responsible in particular for e-beam deposition of silicon and thermal deposition of Te, Fe, In and CdSe. X.P. contributed to HR-TEM measurements. J.J. and I.I. were responsible for experimental design and manuscript preparation. I.I. was responsible for project planning.

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Correspondence to Izumi Ichinose.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Jin, J., Wakayama, Y., Peng, X. et al. Surfactant-assisted fabrication of free-standing inorganic sheets covering an array of micrometre-sized holes. Nature Mater 6, 686–691 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1980

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