Coupled Electromagnetic and Reaction Kinetics Simulation of Super-Resolution Interference Lithography

Abstract

Inspired by the ability of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy to circumvent the diffraction barrier, two-color super-resolution interference lithography exploits nonequilibrium kinetics in materials to achieve large-area nanopatterning while using visible light. Periodic patterns with super-resolved features down to tens of nanometers have been demonstrated in thin films and monolayers. Extending these advances to the bulk nanopatterning of thick films requires a quantitative understanding of the time-dependent interactions of optical dynamics, including absorption, diffraction, and intensity modulation at two wavelengths, with the photoactivated and inhibited reaction kinetics. Here, we develop an efficient electromagnetic (EM) perturbation theory approach that facilitates for the first time fully coupled simulations of EM and chemical kinetics in two-color interference lithography. Applied to a spirothiopyranfunctionalized photoresist system, these simulations show that diffraction and absorption effects are negligible (<0.1%) for depths up to 10 μm, and that tuning exposure time and intensities can lead to concentration contrast up to 80%. We investigate multiple exposure strategies to reduce the pitch of the line pattern including sequential exposures with different times to achieve uniform lines and multiplexed exposures with equal periods. This capability to rapidly and accurately predict the coupled optical and chemical dynamics facilitates the computational design of high-precision patterns in two-color interference lithography.

3D Sub‐Diffraction Printing by Multicolor Photoinhibition Lithography: From Optics to Chemistry

“…Another irradiation scheme reduces the difficulty of the alignment, which consists of a collimated plane wave of the excitation light and a standing wave of the inhibition light. [133,134] Additionally, the interference patterns can be extended from fringes to lattices by superimposing multiple crossing standing waves. The apparatus and methods have been proposed to realize large-area PIL by superimposing excitation and inhibition lattice patterns.…”

International Journal of Electronics and Telecommunications

“…ERIODICALLY patterned surfaces not only have unique characteristics, but also serve as intelligent surfaces that can selectively affect various functionalities in biomaterials, surface engineering, photonics and sensor systems applications [1][2][3][4][5]. Several methods for designing and producing such micro-and nano-functions have been studied and applied (e.g.…”