Nonplanar Nanofabrication via Interface Engineering

Abstract

This thesis develops a platform for scalable fabrication of suspended, ultrathin nanostructures as building blocks of nanoelectromechanical systems by extending conventional planar techniques to nonplanar designs. We achieve this by engineering interface forces through a patterned molecular monolayer to enable controlled delamination of a deposited thin-film in predetermined locations. This allows us to form nonplanar structures with thicknesses < 10 nm and nanogaps reaching < 10 nm – features traditionally challenging to achieve. Our approach, which builds on standard, wafer-scale, and conventionally-compatible techniques, is versatile, tunable, and compatible with diverse materials. As a result, the technique opens up new opportunities for applications such as miniaturized nanoelectromechanical devices, including ultrathin mechanical resonators, which are demonstrated in this work.