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Light forces are a powerful tool for neutral atom manipulation and have been used previously to focus an atomic beam onto a substrate to create periodic nanostructures. We utilize the material-selective characteristic of the atom–light interaction to structure the material composition of a film during growth. A host and a dopant material are evaporated simultaneously, but only the dopant is focused by the light field. The dopant concentration varies laterally on a sub-100-nm-length scale. This technique can be extended to three-dimensional patterning and opens up ways to engineer the photonic, electronic, or magnetic features of a solid.
Schulze et al. (Mon,) studied this question.