Laser manufacturing of spatial resolution approaching quantum limit

Atomic and close-to-atom scale manufacturing is a promising avenue toward single-photon emitters,single-electron transistors,single-atom memory,and quantum-bit devices for future communication,computation,and sensing applications.Laser manufacturing is outstanding to this end for ease of beam manipulation,batch production,and no requirement for photomasks.It is,however,suffering from optical diffraction limits.Herein,we report a spatial resolution improved to the quantum limit by exploiting a threshold tracing and lock-in method,whereby the two-order gap between atomic point defect complexes and optical diffraction limit is surpassed,and a feature size of<5 nm is realized.The underlying physics is that the uncertainty of local atom thermal motion dominates electron excitation,rather than the power density slope of the incident laser.We show that the colour centre yield in hexagonal boron nitride is transformed from stochastic to deterministic,and the emission from individual sites becomes polychromatic to monochromatic.As a result,single colour centres in the regular array are deterministically created with a unity yield and high positional accuracy,serving as a step forward for integrated quantum technological applications.

O-FIB:far-field-induced near-field breakdown for direct nanowriting in an atmospheric environment

Nanoscale surface texturing,drilling,cutting,and spatial sculpturing,which are essential for applications,including thin-film solar cells,photonic chips,antireflection,wettability,and friction drag reduction,require not only high accuracy in material processing,but also the capability of manufacturing in an atmospheric environment.Widely used focused ion beam(FIB)technology offers nanoscale precision,but is limited by the vacuum-working conditions;therefore,it is not applicable to industrial-scale samples such as ship hulls or biomaterials,e.g.,cells and tissues.Here,we report an optical far-field-induced near-field breakdown(O-FIB)approach as an optical version of the conventional FIB technique,which allows direct nanowriting in air.The writing is initiated from nanoholes created by femtosecondlaser-induced multiphoton absorption,and its cutting“knife edge”is sharpened by the far-field-regulated enhancement of the optical near field.A spatial resolution of less than 20 nm(λ/40,withλbeing the light wavelength)is readily achieved.O-FIB is empowered by the utilization of simple polarization control of the incident light to steer the nanogroove writing along the designed pattern.The universality of near-field enhancement and localization makes O-FIB applicable to various materials,and enables a large-area printing mode that is superior to conventional FIB processing.

Two-dimensional In_(2)Se_(3):A rising advanced material for ferroelectric data storage

Ferroelectric memory is a promising candidate for next-generation nonvolatile memory owing to its outstanding performance such as low power consump-tion,fast speed,and high endurance.However,the ferroelectricity of conven-tional ferroelectric materials will be eliminated by the depolarization field when the size drops to the nanometer scale.As a result,the miniaturization of ferroelectric devices was hindered,which makes ferroelectric memory unable to keep up with the development of integrated-circuit(IC)miniaturization.Recently,a two-dimensional(2D)In2Se3 was reported to maintain stable ferro-electricity at the ultrathin scale,which is expected to break through the bottle-neck of miniaturization.Soon,devices based on 2D In2Se3,including the ferroelectric field-effect transistor,ferroelectric channel transistor,synaptic fer-roelectric semiconductor junction,and ferroelectric memristor were demon-strated.However,a comprehensive understanding of the structures and the ferroelectric-switching mechanism of 2D In2Se3 is still lacking.Here,the atomic structures of different phases,the dynamic mechanism of ferroelectric switching,and the performance/functions of the latest devices of 2D In2Se3 are reviewed.Furthermore,the correlations among the structures,the properties,and the device performance are analyzed.Finally,several crucial problems or challenges and possible research directions are put forward.We hope that this review paper can provide timely knowledge and help for the research commu-nity to develop 2D In2Se3 based ferroelectric memory and computing technol-ogy for practical industrial applications.