Fabrication of regularly arranged nanocolumns on diamond(100) using micellar masks

Cylindrical diamond columns of 15 nm height and 10 nm diameter have been prepared on a diamond(100) substrate by exploiting the self-organization of metal-loaded diblock copolymers. For this purpose, chemomechanically polished substrates of synthetic (high pressure high temperature) diamond exhibiting extremely low roughness (typical root-mean-square roughness 60 pm) were covered by a monolayer of gold-loaded inverse polystyrene-block-poly(2-vinylpyridine) micelles which self-organize in an hexagonal order on the substrate. After burning off the blockcopolymer in an oxygen plasma, the resulting Au nanoparticles act as a mask during further etching the diamond substrate in this plasma. As a result, Au-capped diamond columns are formed with an approximate size of the former gold particles. After removing the Au caps by evaporation at 1100 degrees C in ultrahigh vacuum, an array of diamond nanocolumns is obtained. As a consequence of this preparation process, the columns form an hexagonal lattice with a separation of 85 nm reflecting the arrangement of the self-organized micelles. The successive states of sample preparation were characterized by atomic force microscopy, Rutherford backscattering, and in situ scanning tunneling microscopy. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-8979(00)02510-4].