Sub-100 nm, centimeter-scale, parallel dip-pen nanolithography

Dip-pen nanolithography, a scanning-probe-based lithography in which an AFM tip is used to generate nanoscale chemical patterns by directly transferring molecules to a surface, is a very effective nanofabrication method for patterning a wide range of surfaces with many types of materials. DPN does not require an expensive master or resist and is capable of rapid prototyping. It is substrate general and allows one to directly deposit inks made of both soft and hard matter. DPN is amenable to massive parallelization where either the same or different inks can be confined to the tips that make up a cantilever array. DPN is ideally suitable for parallelization because feature size is independent of the contact-force range (0-10μN), and precise horizontal and vertical movements of the scanner control the path of the tip, and the dimensions of the resulting patterns.