Pneumatically actuated elastomeric device for nanoscale surface patterning

The authors present a simple polydimethysiloxane (PDMS) device for nanoscale surface patterning by controllably bringing a hard silicon nitride tip on a PDMS membrane in and out of contact with surfaces using pressurized gas to inflate the membrane. The writing process is analogous to contact printing. By regulating the pressured gas to actuate the silicon nitride tip on the PDMS membrane, the nanometer size features can be easily fabricated on substrates. Moreover, using the dot matrix method, this PDMS device can masklessly fabricate arbitrary patterns. In this letter, a nanometer scale three-line pattern is demonstrated.