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Chemical nanomachining of silicon by gold-catalyzed oxidation

A chemical nanomachining process for the rapid, scalable production of nanostructure assemblies from silicon-on-insulator is demonstrated. The process is based on the spontaneous, local oxidation of Si induced by Au, which is selectively evaporated onto the Si surface. The Au-catalyzed oxide forms a pattern that serves as a robust mask for the underlying Si, enabling the use of simple wet chemistry to sculpt arrays of nanostructures of diverse shapes including rings, pillars, wires, and nanopores. The remarkable simplicity of this chemical nanomachining process makes it widely accessible as an enabling technique for applications from photonics to biotechnology.