Creation and Characterization of Nanoscale Ribbons on MoS₂ by Atomic Force Microscope Nanolithography

The atomic force microscope (AFM) has been widely used for fabricating the nanoscale oxide ribbons on various materials surface. Herein, we first conducted local anodic oxidation (LAO) lithography on two-dimensional nanomaterial (2D), i.e. multilayer MoS₂, using AFM. The correlation of patterning behavior on the MoS₂ flakes between the lithography conditions was investigated. The height and full width half maximum (FWHM) increase linearly with increasing tip voltage, even at different tip speeds, which is consistent with the results obtained from the Cabrera-Mott oxidation theory. The size of the clear relation decreases linearly with increasing tip speed, indicating that longer tip writing patterns result in more oxidation. The formation mechanism of the patterned oxide lines is presented along with LAO reaction processes.The final LAO lithography products have been demonstrated to be MoO₂ and MoO₃ by micro-Raman spectroscopy. These results show that LAO lithography using AFM is an effective technique for nanofabrication of nanodevices.