Scanning Probe Contact Printing

This paper reports a scanning probe contact printing (SP-CP) method for generating submicron patterns. It uses a novel scanning probe with an integrated elastomeric tip to transfer chemical materials onto a substrate. The SP-CP method combines the advantages of microcontact printing and dip-pen nanolithography to generate monolayer features chemisorbed on a gold surface. Arbitrary, connected features such as lines or blocks can be formed by connecting multiple dots, analogous to dot-matrix printing. We discuss the design and fabrication of the novel probes for SP-CP and how they can be used to generate sub-500-nm dots and lines of 1-octadecanethiol on a gold surface.