Nonplanar Nanofabrication Via Interface Engineering

We report an approach for scalable fabrication of suspended, ultrathin, nonplanar nanostructures without the use of sacrificial layers. We achieve this by engineering interfacial forces through a patterned self-assembled molecular monolayer to enable controlled delamination of a deposited oxide thin-film in predetermined locations. This allows formation of nonplanar structures with thicknesses < 10 nm and nanogaps reaching < 10 nm – features hard to achieve with conventional fabrication. This approach is versatile as it extends conventional, wafer-scale planar fabrication techniques to nonplanar designs. The resulting features are tunable in structure and compatible with various materials, enabling applications in miniaturized nanoelectromechanical devices including ultrathin mechanical resonators.