Fabrication of free-standing fullerene nanowire using direct electron beam writing and sacrificial dry etching

This paper reports a fabrication of doubly-supported free-standing fullerene (C₆₀) nanowires on MEMS structures to propose an integration process of carbon nano-materials to surface-micromachined silicon devices. By irradiating vacuum-deposited fullerene film with electron beam (EB), polymerized fullerene nanowires were patterned. Then, free-standing structures of the fullerene nanowires were obtained by sacrificial etching using XeF₂ gas. The fabricated fullerene nanowire was 2 mum long, 400 nm wide and 15 nm thick.