Exploring the fabrication of Co and Mn nanostructures with focused soft x-ray beam induced deposition
Authors
F. Tu, A. Späth, M. Drost, F. Vollnhals, S. Krick Calderon, R.H. Fink, and H. Marbach
Reference
Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B: Nanotechnology and Microelectronics, vol. 35, no. 3, art. no. 031601, 2017
Description
Focused soft X-ray beam induced deposition of metallic deposits from metal organic precursors is a promising novel technique for additive nanostructure fabrication. In the present work, the authors present a comparative study for deposition and in situ characterization of Co and Mn nanostructures in a scanning transmission x-ray microscope. The authors detect a significant selectivity of the deposition process with respect to the incident photon energy that arises from the enhanced x-ray absorption cross section of the precursor molecules for near-threshold excitation. This effect has been investigated for the L2,3-edges of the respective metal centers of two different precursor molecules as well as the N and O K-edges of the respective ligands. The authors find a photon-limited growth mode for deposition from cobalt tricarbonyl nitrosyl [Co(CO)3NO], while the process is precursor-limited for methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl [MeCpMn(CO)3] possibly due to a comparably low vapor pressure of the latter precursor.
