Nanoembossing induced ferroelectric lithography on PZT films for silver particle patterning.

The concept of growing nanosize particles on polarized ferroelectric domain areas is known as ferroelectric lithography (FL). Here, a further step of technical development was achieved by combining nanoembossing technique with the FL to realize the selective growth of silver on the polarized areas induced by nanoembossing. The induced rearrangements of domain distributions by embossing in the ferroelectric films have been characterized by piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM). The selective photochemical reduction of silver particles on the embossed nanostructures associated with the underlying domain patterns created by the nanoembossing process has been successfully demonstrated. This nanoembossing induced ferroelectric lithography (NIFL) developed in this work is expected to create an alternative route for nanoscale patterning of metals.

Nano-embossing technology on ferroelectric thin film Pb(Zr0.3,Ti0.7)O3 for multi-bit storage application.

In this work, we apply nano-embossing technique to form a stagger structure in ferroelectric lead zirconate titanate [Pb(Zr0.3, Ti0.7)O3 (PZT)] films and investigate the ferroelectric and electrical characterizations of the embossed and un-embossed regions, respectively, of the same films by using piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) and Radiant Technologies Precision Material Analyzer. Attributed to the different layer thickness of the patterned ferroelectric thin film, two distinctive coercive voltages have been obtained, thereby, allowing for a single ferroelectric memory cell to contain more than one bit of data.

Spatially selective photochemical reduction of silver on nanoembossed ferroelectric PZT nanowires.

It is well known that photochemical reaction in an aqueous solution can be chosen by selectively patterning the domain structures of ferroelectrics. In this work, we investigate the photochemically induced deposition of Ag particles on ferroelectric lead zirconate titanate [Pb(Zr(x),Ti(1 - x))O(3)] nanowires fabricated by nanoembossing technology. The photochemical reduction of Ag particles is found to occur preferentially along the embossed nanowires. By imaging domain configurations of the embossed films using the piezoresponse force microscope, the spatially selective deposition of Ag particles can be associated with the underlying ferroelectric domain structures created by the nanoembossing process. The controllable and selective deposition of metal species onto nanoembossed ferroelectric nanostructures without the need for an external electrical field is promising for providing a new route to nanoferroelectric lithography.