Tip-based nanofabrication for scalablemanufacturing

Tip-based nanofabrication (TBN) is a family of emerging nanofabrication techniques that use a nanometer scale tip to fabricate nanostructures. In this review we first introduce the history of the TBN and the technology development. We then briefly review various TBN techniques that use different physical or chemical mechanisms to fabricate features and discuss some of the state-of-the-art techniques. Subsequently we focus on those TBN methods that have demonstrated potential to scale up the manufacturing throughput. Finally we discuss several research directions that are essential for making TBN a scalable nano-manufacturing technology.