Nanostructure Fabrication using Dip-pen Nanolithography

The ionic layer-by-layer (LBL) assembled films can be formed by sequentially dipping of substrates to oppositely charged polyions solution in the multilayer, called polyelectrolytes multilayer (PEM) films. Easy way of these assemblies of charged polymers offer the ability to adjust important parameters such as controllability of thickness in the nanometer-scale level and functionality of most top layer of PEM films. Nevertheless, we do not know of any trials to fabricate PEM organic films into nanometer size. Herein, we show the integration of the LBL technique with DPN in fabricating nanometer size patterns of multilayered polyelectrolyte structures. Through the use of single and multiple cantilever AFM probes, we demonstrate the parallel writing capabilities of DPN.