Towards Electron Beam Induced Deposition Improvements for Nanotechnology

Electron beam induced deposition can be applied as a direct write technique for the creation of 3 dimensional nano-scale structures. The technique does not require lift-off and mask based process steps and therefore has potential for application in rapid prototyping for nanotechnology, with a high degree of flexibility. The material quality and microstructure of the deposition however, is usually somewhat different to that of the pure material and hence the obtained properties of the nano-depositions do not reflect the bulk properties of the desired material. Current research is focused on improvements for the deposition processes with the aim to improve the purity of the deposition to such an extent that the local characteristic aimed for (such as conductivity) is good enough to attain the required local functionality. This paper reports on the current status and on some of the methods that have been applied to improve the deposition process.