Scaling down lateral dimensions of silicon nanopillars fabricated by reactive ion etching with Au/Cr self-assembled clusters as an etch mask.

Nanodot and nanopillar structures and precisely controlled reproducible fabrication thereof are of great interest in common nanoelectronic devices, including photonic crystals and surface plasmon resonance instruments. In this work, fabrication process of the silicon nanopillar structures is described. It includes self-organization of gold and chromium clusters at thickness close to that of one at. diam. to serve as etching masks followed by the reactive ion etching to form silicon nanopillars. SEM and XPS were used to characterize self-organized gold and chromium clusters as well as the final silicon nanopillars. This method was found to produce silicon nanopillars of sub-10 nm lateral dimensions and the diam.-to-height aspect ratio of up to 1:14. [on SciFinder(R)]