Shedding light on the nanoworld: diffusion-limited nanostructures from laser-focused atom deposition

We study the role of surface diffusion in the fabrication of nanostructures by laser-focused (“cold”) atom lithography, using kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of a growth model that accounts for spontaneous organisation of 3D islands. Contrary to intuition, we find that the lateral size of the nanostructures is barely affected by surface diffusion of deposited adatoms, even when the adatom diffusion length exceeds the standing-wave field wavelength. To cite this article: F. Nita, A. Pimpinelli, C. R. Physique 5 (2004).