Abstract
Manipulating matter at the nanometre scale is important for many electronic, chemical and biological advances1,2,3, but present solid-state fabrication methods do not reproducibly achieve dimensional control at the nanometre scale. Here we report a means of fashioning matter at these dimensions that uses low-energy ion beams and reveals surprising atomic transport phenomena that occur in a variety of materials and geometries. The method is implemented in a feedback-controlled sputtering system that provides fine control over ion beam exposure and sample temperature. We call the method “ion-beam sculpting”, and apply it to the problem of fabricating a molecular-scale hole, or nanopore, in a thin insulating solid-state membrane. Such pores can serve to localize molecular-scale electrical junctions and switches4,5,6 and function as masks7 to create other small-scale structures. Nanopores also function as membrane channels in all living systems, where they serve as extremely sensitive electro-mechanical devices that regulate electric potential, ionic flow, and molecular transport across cellular membranes8. We show that ion-beam sculpting can be used to fashion an analogous solid-state device: a robust electronic detector consisting of a single nanopore in a Si3N4 membrane, capable of registering single DNA molecules in aqueous solution.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy.
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Li, J., Stein, D., McMullan, C. et al. Ion-beam sculpting at nanometre length scales. Nature 412, 166–169 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35084037
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35084037
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