Atomic-scale patterning of hydrogen terminated Ge(001) by scanning tunneling microscopy

In this paper we demonstrate atomic-scale lithography on hydrogen terminated Ge(001). The lithographic patterns were obtained by selectively desorbing hydrogen atoms from a H resist layer adsorbed on a clean, atomically flat Ge(001) surface with a scanning tunneling microscope tip operating in ultra-high vacuum. The influence of the tip-to-sample bias on the lithographic process have been investigated. Lithographic patterns with feature-sizes from 200 to 1.8 nm have been achieved by varying the tip-to-sample bias. These results open up the possibility of a scanning-probe lithography approach to the fabrication of future atomic-scale devices in germanium.