Laser manipulation of iron for nanofabrication

Abstract

We fabricate iron nanolines by depositing an atomic beam of iron through a far-off resonant laser standing wave (SW) onto a glass-ceramic substrate. The laser SW is tuned 200MHz above the D45→F5o5Fe56 transition at a vacuum wavelength of 372.099nm. The resulting nanolines exhibit a period of 186nm, a height above the background of 8nm and a full width at half maximum of 95nm. These nanostructures cover a surface area of ≃1.6×0.4mm2, corresponding to ≃8600 iron lines with a length of ≃400μm.