[en] We fabricated contact electrodes in Si for nanoelectronic device fabrication using 40 keV As ion implantation. Complete amorphization of the Si surface with contact electrodes using 400 eV Ar ion irradiation at room temperature followed by annealing at 700 deg. C produced Si surface with negligible SiC crystallites suitable for ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscope nanolithography. We could locate the implanted and unimplanted regions on Si and fabricate Si dangling bond wires between two contact electrodes, which is the first step for the fabrication of nanoelectronic devices in Si using UHV STM nanolithography

[en] Si(1 0 0) surfaces were prepared by wet-chemical etching followed by 0.3-1.5 keV Ar ion sputtering, either at elevated or room temperature (RT). After a brief anneal under ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) conditions, the resulting surfaces were examined by scanning tunneling microscopy. We find that wet-chemical etching alone cannot produce a clean and flat Si(1 0 0) surface. However, subsequent 300 eV Ar ion sputtering at room temperature followed by a 700 deg. C anneal yields atomically clean and flat Si(1 0 0) surfaces suitable for nanoscale device fabrication