AFM-Induced Amine Deprotection: Triggering Localized Bond Cleavage by Application of Tip/Substrate Voltage Bias for the Surface Self-Assembly of Nanosized Dendritic Objects

摘要

We have achieved patternwise fabrication of a primary aliphatic amine surface on the nanometer scale and shown that the amines are active toward ionic self-assembly. The relationship between the size of the macromolecule and the height of the resulting features is strong evidence that the features are indeed composed of these molecules. We expect that this process will be applicable wherever amines can be used to selectively assemble materials onto a surface. Specifically, the use of amines for deposition of resist materials for lithography, electroless metaliza-tion, device assembly, and protein binding can all be applied on the nanometer length scale. This work potentially provides a method for sequential patternwise deposition of single molecules and may be applied to the surface assembly of more complex molecular machines.