Aaron,

"Hydrogen flame annealing" might be a good starting point. As typically
applied, it won't give you exactly what you're describing, as almost all the
literature on this comes out of electrochemistry, and isn't focused as much
on uniformity. Essentially all it's doing though is taking advantage of a
crystalline metal to generate what they call "terraces" from 100 to 200 nm
in total height, in for example (111) oriented Au. "Features" are typically
tweaked by sweeping the flame at different angles and frequencies, though
presumably there's a clever lithographic way to take advantage of the
crystalline structure as well.

Kevin Paul Nichols
MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology
Mesoscale Chemical Systems
Meander 151
University of Twente
Postbus 217
7500 AE Enschede
The Netherlands

Office: +31 (0)53 489 26 31
Mobile: +31 (0)6 49 312 471
Fax   : +31 (0)53 489 35 95
Email : k.p.nichols@utwente.nl
Web   : http://mcs.tnw.utwente.nl/


On 3/12/08 8:25 PM, "Aaron Datesman"  wrote:

> Dear List Members,
>
> I would like to sputter deposit a metallic film to have a "sawtooth"
> thickness profile, shown below:
>
>
>    /|        /|        /|
>   / |       / |       / |
>  /  |___/  |___/  |___ etc.
>
> The desired film height is ~100 nm and the width of each feature is ~500
> nm.  Can anyone suggest a suitable method to accomplish this?