A simple and novel method for fabricating poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS)-coated dip pen nanolithography (DPN) stamp tips was developed. These kinds of tips absorb chemicals ("inks") easily and allow one to generate molecule-based patterns in a conventional DPN experiment. The generated patterns also can be imaged with the same DPN stamp tips. This method is a type of scanning probe contact printing but provides the ability to generate higher resolution structures than one can obtain with the conventional technique, which thus far has only enabled micron scale patterning. Sub-100 nm resolution patterning with 16-mercaptohexadecanoic acid (MHA) as an ink is demonstrated with these novel tips and is comparable to what one can obtain with a conventional ink-coated Si₃N₄ probe tip. Proof-of-concept is also demonstrated with 1-octadecanethiol (ODT), dendrimers and cystamine as inks.

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