E-beam sculpting employs a conventional transmission electron microscope to selectively remove material from tiny segments of suspended metallic nanowires. As a result, it enables fabrication of electrical devices with 3 nm resolution using instruments already available in most materials science research laboratories.
The technique allows selective sputtering of material from the wire to fabricate 10 nm thick wires with nanometre-sized holes or constrictions spaced as little as 8 nm apart, and fine-tuning of the thickness of selected regions of a wire with nanometre precision. The same method can also introduce crystalline regions into amorphous wires by mobilizing the atoms in the wire, and produce nanometre-sized grains of metal on the wire by localized melting.
The main achievement of e-beam sculpting is the possibility of producing multiple structures within one single nanowire in a controlled manner. One potential application is the fabrication of room temperature single electron transistors (SETs). These devices have been created before, but making them operational above cryogenic temperatures proved challenging. This new technique would provide sufficient resolution to fabricate SETs that can work at room temperature.