Ultra-Flat Gold Surfaces

Ready-to-Use, Pristine Au(111) for Nanotechnology

Template-Stripped Gold Chips provide an ultra-flat pristine gold surface for research applications including AFM and SEM, biosensor development, and studies of self-assembled monolayers. The chips are fabricated by coating the flattest available prime grade silicon wafers or freshly-split mica, with no adhesion layer. Then, 1-cm x 1-cm square glass chips are epoxy-glued to the surface of the gold.  The gold surface you use is the one in contact with the silicon or mica substrate, so it is ultra-flat and protected from the atmosphere until you are ready to use it.

illustration of template stripped gold Features & Benefits

  • RMS roughness approaching atomic flatness.
  • Uncontaminated Surface – Gold is protected from the atmosphere until stripped from the template, providing a pristine surface free from organics and other atmospheric contaminants.
  • Ready to Use – Chips do not require cleaning, eliminating the need for hazardous cleaning solutions or expensive cleaning equipment.
  • Convenient – Multiple chips per template make it easy to prepare fresh, clean, and ultraflat chips just seconds before your next experiment.

Ordering Information

All chips are aluminosilicate glass, 1 cm x 1 cm (contact us for alternative chip dimmensions):

SKUSubstrateGold ThicknessChips
AU.1000.SWTSGSilicon Wafer100 nm20ORDER NOW
AU.2000.MTSGMica200 nm5ORDER NOW

Protocol – Recommended procedure for peeling off glass chips.

Comparison with Standard Gold

Standard and ultra-flat gold surfaces were analyzed by Atomic Force Microscopy over a randomly-selected 1 µm2 area to assess roughness:
comparison RMS roughness of standard gold with ultra-flat gold

See also study of Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) on Ultraflat Gold Here

Surface Orientation

Platypus Technologies’ Ultra-flat gold films have a uniform Au(111) orientation that covers the entire surface area of the chip.

electron diffraction map of ultra-flat gold Au(111)

Applications

Ultra-flat gold surfaces enable high-resolution characterization of single molecules and self-assembled monolayers (SAM) via atomic force microscopy (AFM) or scanning tunneling microscopy (STM).  Ultra-flat gold surfaces are ideal for applications in self-assembly, single-molecule imaging, nano-contact printing, DNA origami, or nano-photonics.

Examples of Studies that used Ultra-flat gold:

  • C. Ciano et al. “Phonon-Polaritons in flakes of h-BN” Appl. Phys. Lett., 2018. LINK
  • X. Jia et al. “Surface modes of periodic nanopatch metasurface” Optics Express, 2018. LINK
  • H. Wang et al. “Electron tunneling across plasmonic junctions” Phys. Chem., 2017. LINK
  • K. Jimenez et al. “Electronic Conductance through DNA molecules” J. Phys. Chem. A, 2017. LINK
  • M. Sajfutdinow et al. “Patterning of self-assembled monolayer (SAM)” Nanoscale, 2017. LINK
  • G. Akselrod et al. “Enhancement in plasmonic nanoantennas” Nature Photonics, 2014. LINK
  • T. Lee et al. “Construction of RNA-Quantum Dot for Nanoscale Biomemory” ACS Nano, 2015. LINK

Don’t see what you need? Contact us for custom coating projects on 608-237-1270 or email us.

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