Fabrication of nanoscale gaps in integrated circuits

Nanosize objects such as metal clusters present an ideal system for the study of quantum phenomena and for the construction of practical quantum devices. Integrating these small objects in a macroscopic circuit is, however, a difficult task. So far, nanoparticles have been contacted and addressed by highly sophisticated techniques not suitable for large-scale integration in macroscopic circuits. We present an optical lithography method that allows for the fabrication of a network of electrodes separated by gaps of controlled nanometer size. The main idea is to control the gap size with subnanometer precision using a structure grown by molecular-beam epitaxy. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.