Paul Scherrer Institut

Bettina Baumeister

Thomas A Jung

Ernst Meyer

Laura Heyderman

Christoph Walter

The invention is essentially characterized in that in a first step a substrate is provided, which is coated with defined pattern of protrusions of a coating layer of a different material, so that an interface is defined between the substrate and the coating layer. As an example, the patterned coating layer can be applied by first forming an essentially homogeneous coating layer, which is then partially removed by means of photolithographic and etching techniques, leaving nanometer sized protrusions in that layer. As a next step, the surface provided with these structures is modified by selectively removing protrusions by means of a micro-device. Such a micro-device can be formed in a similar way to a scanning probe microscope (SPM) tip. The presence or absence of a protrusion represents a readable data bit information.

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Würenlingen, Switzerland

Bettina Baumeister