Nanofabrication Handbook

Book excerpt: While many books are dedicated to individual aspects of nanofabrication, there is no single source that defines and explains the total vision of the field. Filling this gap, Nanofabrication Handbook presents a unique collection of new and the most important established approaches to nanofabrication. Contributors from leading research facilities and academic institutions around the world define subfields, offer practical instructions and examples, and pave the way for future research. Helping readers to select the proper fabricating technique for their experiments, the book provides a broad vision of the most critical problems and explains how to solve them. It includes basic definitions and introduces the main underlying concepts of nanofabrication. The book also discusses the major advantages and disadvantages of each approach and offers a wide variety of examples of cutting-edge applications. Each chapter focuses on a particular method or aspect of study. For every method, the contributors describe the underlying theoretical basis, resolution, patterns and substrates used, and applications. They show how applications at the nanoscale require a different process and understanding than those at the microscale. For each experiment, they elucidate key solutions to problems relating to materials, methods, and surface considerations. A complete resource for this rapidly emerging interdisciplinary field, this handbook provides practical information for planning the experiments of any project that employs nanofabrication techniques. It gives readers a foundation to enter the complex world of nanofabrication and inspires the scientific community at large to push the limits of nanometer resolution.