Lithography techniques are currently being developed to fabricate nanoscale components for integrated circuits, medical diagnostics and optoelectronics. In conventional far-field optical lithography, lateral feature resolution is diffraction-limited. Approaches that overcome the diffraction limit have been developed, but these are difficult to implement or they preclude arbitrary pattern formation. Techniques based on near-field scanning optical microscopy can overcome the diffraction limit, but they suffer from inherently low throughput and restricted scan areas. Highly parallel two-dimensional, silicon-based, near-field scanning optical microscopy aperture arrays have been fabricated, but aligning a non-deformable aperture array to a large-area substrate with near-field proximity remains challenging. However, recent advances in lithographies based on scanning probe microscopy have made use of transparent two-dimensional arrays of pyramid-shaped elastomeric tips (or 'pens') for large-area, high-throughput patterning of ink molecules. Here, we report a massively parallel scanning probe microscopy-based approach that can generate arbitrary patterns by passing 400-nm light through nanoscopic apertures at each tip in the array. The technique, termed beam pen lithography, can toggle between near- and far-field distances, allowing both sub-diffraction limit (100 nm) and larger features to be generated.

Nanofabrication strategies are becoming increasingly expensive and equipment-intensive, and consequently less accessible to researchers. As an alternative, scanning probe lithography has become a popular means of preparing nanoscale structures, in part owing to its relatively low cost and high resolution, and a registration accuracy that exceeds most existing technologies. However, increasing the throughput of cantilever-based scanning probe systems while maintaining their resolution and registration advantages has from the outset been a significant challenge. Even with impressive recent advances in cantilever array design, such arrays tend to be highly specialized for a given application, expensive, and often difficult to implement. It is therefore difficult to imagine commercially viable production methods based on scanning probe systems that rely on conventional cantilevers. Here we describe a low-cost and scalable cantilever-free tip-based nanopatterning method that uses an array of hard silicon tips mounted onto an elastomeric backing. This method-which we term hard-tip, soft-spring lithography-overcomes the throughput problems of cantilever-based scanning probe systems and the resolution limits imposed by the use of elastomeric stamps and tips: it is capable of delivering materials or energy to a surface to create arbitrary patterns of features with sub-50-nm resolution over centimetre-scale areas. We argue that hard-tip, soft-spring lithography is a versatile nanolithography strategy that should be widely adopted by academic and industrial researchers for rapid prototyping applications.

The development of a lithographic method that can rapidly define nanoscale features across centimeter-scale surfaces has been a long standing goal of the nanotechnology community. If such a ‘desktop nanofab’ could be implemented in a low-cost format, it would bring the possibility of point-of-use nanofabrication for rapidly prototyping diverse functional structures. Here we report the development of a new tool that is capable of writing arbitrary patterns composed of diffraction-unlimited features over square centimeter areas that are in registry with existing patterns and nanostructures. Importantly, this instrument is based on components that are inexpensive compared to the combination of state-of-the-art nanofabrication tools that approach its capabilities. This tool can be used to prototype functional electronic devices in a mask-free fashion in addition to providing a unique platform for performing high throughput nano- to macroscale photochemistry with relevance to biology and medicine.

The challenge of constructing surfaces with nanostructured chemical functionality is central to many areas of biology and biotechnology. This protocol describes the steps required for performing molecular printing using polymer pen lithography (PPL), a cantilever-free scanning probe-based technique that can generate sub-100-nm molecular features in a massively parallel fashion. To illustrate how such molecular printing can be used for a variety of biologically relevant applications, we detail the fabrication of the lithographic apparatus and the deposition of two materials, an alkanethiol and a polymer onto a gold and silicon surface, respectively, and show how the present approach can be used to generate nanostructures composed of proteins and metals. Finally, we describe how PPL enables researchers to easily create combinatorial arrays of nanostructures, a powerful approach for high-throughput screening. A typical protocol for fabricating PPL arrays and printing with the arrays takes 48-72 h to complete, including two overnight waiting steps.

Polymer‐pen lithography is a scanning‐probe contact‐printing method that can control feature diameter from many micrometers to sub‐100nm in a single writing operation as a result of force‐ and time‐dependent ink transport. A quantitative model that relates the force between the elastomeric tips and the substrate to the feature edge length has been derived and experimentally confirmed (see image).