Controlled nanostructures at La_(0.7)Sr_(0.3)MnO₃ thin film surfaces formed by STM lithography

Nanoscale lithography on La$_{0.7}$Sr$_{0.3}$MnO$_{3}$ (LSMO) thin film surfaces has been performed by scanning tunneling microscopy under ambient conditions. From line-etching experiments we found that the line depth is increasing in a step-wise fashion with increasing bias voltage as well as with decreasing scan speed. On average, the depth of the etched lines is an integral multiple of the LSMO out-of-plane lattice constant about 0.4 nm. A minimum wall thickness of 1.5 nm was obtained between etched lines. We have utilized the ability to control the etched line depths to create complicated inverse-pyramid nanostructure. Our work shows the feasibility of using STM lithography to create controllable and complex nanoscale structures in LSMO thin film.