Atomic White-Out: Enabling Atomic Circuitry through Mechanically Induced Bonding of Single Hydrogen Atoms to a Silicon Surface

We report the mechanically induced formation of a silicon-hydrogen covalent bond and its application in engineering nanoelectronic devices. We show that using the tip of a noncontact atomic force microscope (NC-AFM), a single hydrogen atom could be vertically manipulated. When applying a localized electronic excitation, a single hydrogen atom is desorbed from the hydrogen-passivated surface and can be transferred to the tip apex, as evidenced from a unique signature in frequency shift curves. In the absence of tunnel electrons and electric field in the scanning probe microscope junction at 0 V, the hydrogen atom at the tip apex is brought very close to a silicon dangling bond, inducing the mechanical formation of a silicon-hydrogen covalent bond and the passivation of the dangling bond. The functionalized tip was used to characterize silicon dangling bonds on the hydrogen-silicon surface, which was shown to enhance the scanning tunneling microscope contrast, and allowed NC-AFM imaging with atomic and chemical bond contrasts. Through examples, we show the importance of this atomic-scale mechanical manipulation technique in the engineering of the emerging technology of on-surface dangling bond based nanoelectronic devices.