Facile fabrication of sub-20-nm nanochannels based on crystallinity-dependent anisotropic etching of silicon

We developed a novel method to fabricate nanochannels with simple and facile process utilizing the crystallinity-dependent anisotropic wet etching of silicon. The nanochannels were formed in bulk (111)-oriented single-crystalline silicon wafer by single step of microscale lithography and sealed by thin film deposition. Hence the massively parallel and wafer scale nanochannel fabrication was easily achieved without the necessity of nanolithography or complicated process. The dimension of the fabricated nanochannels was down to 16 nm in depth and 175 nm in width, and up to 8 cm in length. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.