I have been trying to get things started with the e-beam lithography to begin creating the trough structures to look at how adsorption in a channel will occur. One thing I like about this project is that we are given the opportunity for symmetry. That is, we are looking at the adsorption of surfactants on the top of small area open surfaces (the terraces) as well as adsorption where the surface is still small but confined. The difficulty with this is that surfactants are, of course, very small. Therefore, in order for the effects of the "confinement" to be noticed, or different than any other surface, the surface must be on the order of a few surfactant molecules long or smaller. That is why this project is so challenging so far is that creating such structures isn't like picking up an x-acto knife and cutting a small piece of substrate. It must also be smooth and, for the most part, flat so that the size of the surface is the variable causing changes.
Using the smallest size spheres is how these surfaces will be achieved, but the smaller the spheres the harder it is to obtain self assembled monolayers of the beads. So what we tried with the etching last time is using a small amount of O2 etching along with the primary etchant. The O2 will shrink the beads linearly with etch time, so the structure formed will (should) have a terrace smaller than the original bead size!
I am really looking forward to working with the e-beam lithography because aside from just being plain cool it will be more precise and repeatable. Exciting things are happening!! Now if I could only get over this cold....
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