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Nanometer-Scale Infrared Spectroscopy of Heterogeneous Polymer Nanostructures Fabricated by Tip-Based Nanofabrication

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journal contribution
posted on 2012-09-25, 00:00 authored by Jonathan R. Felts, Kevin Kjoller, Michael Lo, Craig B. Prater, William P. King
There is a significant need for chemical identification and chemical imaging of nanofabricated structures and devices, especially for multiple materials integrated at the nanometer scale. Here we present nanofabrication, chemical identification, and nanometer-scale chemical imaging of polymer nanostructures with better than 100 nm spatial resolution. Polymer nanostructures of polyethylene, polystyrene, and poly(3-dodecylthiophene-2,5-diyl) were fabricated by tip-based nanofabrication. Nanometer-scale infrared measurements using atomic force microscopy infrared spectroscopy (AFM-IR) obtained quantitative chemical spectra of these nanostructures. We show chemical imaging of intersecting patterns of nanometer-scale polymer lines of different chemical compositions. The results indicate that for closely packed heterogeneous nanostructures, the spatial resolution of AFM-IR is not limited by nanometer-scale thermal diffusion, but is instead limited by the cantilever sensitivity and the signal-to-noise ratio of the AFM-IR system.

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