Coplanar waveguides with sub-10 nm gold films

Coplanar waveguides (CPWs) with sub-10 nm gold films are fabricated and characterized up to 40 GHz. Such film thickness is much thinner than the electron mean free path (MFP) of bulk gold. Pressure-induced surface deformation technique is developed to form 7 nm continuous films, which are thinner than the nominal percolation threshold of gold (i.e. 8 nm). The measured results show that such CPWs have less dispersion, but high loss when compared with thick metal CPWs. In addition to possible RF nanofluidic channel development, such CPWs provide a new approach for disordered electronic system studies. Further work is needed to understand and model sub-10 nm CPWs.