Molybdenum nanopillar arrays: Fabrication and engineering

We report on the fabrication of molybdenum (Mo) nanopillar (NP) arrays with NP diameters down to 75 nm by means of deep-reactive ion etching at cryogenic temperatures. A variable-thickness Mo metal layer sputtered onto a Si₃N₄/Si substrate makes possible NPs with different lengths in a controllable manner. We demonstrate how our fabrication strategy leads to tunable cross-sections with different geometries, including hexagonal, cylindrical, square and triangular shapes, by using electron beam lithography on hydrogen silsesquioxane negative tone resist. To ensure well-defined facets and surfaces, we employ deep-reactive ion etching in a gas mixture of SF₆ and O₂ at cryogenic temperatures in an inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE) system. These results represent an attractive route towards the realization of high-density Mo NP arrays for applications from nanoelectronics to quantum sensing and hydrogen evolution reaction catalysis.