PROXIMITY EFFECT IN SILICON OXIDATION UNDER A SCANNING PROBE

Recent achievements in the field of nanotechnology allow us to create elements of nanometer dimensions. One of such methods is local anodic oxidation of a substrate material under the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) or atomic force microscope (AFM). This was first demonstrated by Dagata et af. [ I ] . Subsequent studies [2-51 promoted the understanding of the main peculiarities of the oxidation process. Most of them considered the structures in which the fabricated oxide elements were located distantly each other. However, at nanometer distances interatomic and intermolecular interactions should start to play a role in the fabrication processes. Here we present experimental results demonstrating a proximity effect in anodic oxidation of silicon under the tip of an AFM.