Nanostructure fabrication on silicon surfaces by atom transfer from a gold tip using an ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscope

A novel ultrahigh vacuum system for the fabrication and measurement of nanostructures has been developed, which consists of a preparation chamber, a precise mask deposition facility, a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) for nanofabrication, and a low temperature four-contact-probe apparatus. Using the field-induced atom transfer from a gold STM tip, it: has been demonstrated that nanometer-scale gold structures can be fabricated not only on an atomically clean Si(lll)-(7 x 7) surface but also in a gap region among four macroscopic electrodes on a sputter-cleaned Si(lll)surface. The overall findings clearly suggest that the STM atom-transfer technique has proved itself to be a very promising candidate for fabricating nanometer-scale single electron devices.