Creating Nanoscale Patterns of Dendrimers on Silicon Surfaces with Dip-Pen Nanolithography

Dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) is a nanowriting procedure that employs an AFM tip as a “nanopen” to deposit organic molecules onto a substrate surface. This paper describes the application of DPN to write with dendrimer “inks”. We have generated patterns with 100 nm features (∼20 dendrimer molecules) on a Si/SiO x surface and investigated how the resolution is affected by surface chemistry and molecular weight of the dendrimer ink.