Typical hydrogen-passivated silicon <100> surface showing rows of silicon dimers, step edge near the top, and a moderate amount of contamination. Thermal drift has caused distortion of the structures, particularly on the step near the top of the image.

Zyvex Asia works with partner company Zyvex Labs in developing the technology to do Atomically Precise Manufacturing: building structures and products with atomic precision.

Our approach to APM is described elsewhere, but in brief, we start with a silicon chip, clean off surface contamination down to the bare silicon atoms in our UHV chamber, passivate it with hydrogen, perform atomic precision depassivation lithography (popping off the hydrogen passivation atoms with a sharp STM tip) to define structures, then grow 3D structures layer-by-layer by depositing a gas that sticks to the depassivated areas.

Our work is done in a custom-built UHV chamber, using a custom-built STM modeled on the Lyding design, running custom software we developed.

Our lab is inside the Institute for Materials Research and Engineering, and we collaborate closely with IMRE scientists in developing this technology.