New method for fabricating ultra-narrow metallic wires

An improved, cryogenic shadowed evaporation technique has been developed to produce ultra-narrow metallic wires. It has been used to create wires of Pd with widths less than 15 nm and as long as 800 nm. Arrays of wires covering areas as large as 6400 μm² have been made. This method, which can be extended to other materials and structures, is presently limited by the grain size of the "template" material, and therefore holds promise for even finer linewidths.