Light force cooling, focusing, and nanometer-scale deposition of aluminum atoms

We deposited neutral-aluminum atoms in thin parallel lines to form a grating with a line separation of 154.7 nm by using near-resonant laser light and direct-write optical lithography techniques. We did this by using the single-frequency closed UV transition from the second ground state 3p2P3/2 (F = 4) to 3d2D5/2 (F = 5) at 309.4 nm. The aluminum features were analyzed with an atomic-force microscope.