Flying plasmonic lens in the near field for high-speed nanolithography

Abstract

The commercialization of nanoscale devices requires the development of high-throughput nanofabrication technologies that allow frequent design changes. Maskless nanolithography, including electron-beam and scanning-probe lithography, offers the desired flexibility but is limited by low throughput. Here, we report a new low-cost, high-throughput approach to maskless nanolithography that uses an array of plasmonic lenses that 'flies' above the surface to be patterned, concentrating short-wavelength surface plasmons into sub-100 nm spots. However, these nanoscale spots are only formed in the near field, which makes it very difficult to scan the array above the surface at high speed. To overcome this problem we have designed a self-spacing air bearing that can fly the array just 20 nm above a disk that is spinning at speeds of between 4 and 12 m s(-1), and have experimentally demonstrated patterning with a linewidth of 80 nm. This low-cost nanofabrication scheme has the potential to achieve throughputs that are two to five orders of magnitude higher than other maskless techniques.

Additive nanomanufacturing – A review

“…A recent review 101 summarised the advances in sub-diffraction limit DLW. 113 The inventors envisage this technology to be able to pattern a 12 inch wafer in 2 min with sub-100 nm resolution in the future.…”

Review on Micro- and Nanolithography Techniques and their Applications

“…This patterned photo-resist can be used as a protective layer in subsequent etching or deposition processes to build topography on the substrate. 2-3 μm [22] very high typical patterning in laboratory level and production of various MEMS devices Photolithography (projection printing) a few tens of nanometers (37 nm) [2] high -very high (60-80 wafers/hr) [1] commercial products and advanced electronics including advanced ICs [1] , CPU chips Electron beam lithography < 5 nm [23] very low [1,3] (8 hrs to write a chip pattern) [1] masks [3] and ICs production, patterning in R&D including photonic crystals, channels for nanofluidics [23] Focused ion beam lithography 20 nm with a minimal lateral dimension of 5 nm [2] very low [3] patterning in R&D including hole arrays [125,134] , bull's-eye structure [132] , plasmonic lens [137] Soft lithography a few tens of nanometers to micrometers [2,13] (30 nm) [2] high LOCs for various applications [13,96] Nanoimprint lithography 6-40 nm [14,15,18] high (> 5 wafers/hr) [1] bio-sensors [17] , bioelectronics [18] , LOCs: nano channels, nano wires [97,102,104] Dip-pen lithography a few tens of nanometers [39,40,43] very low -low, possibly medium [39] bio-electronics [43] , biosensors [40] , gas sensors [42] There are three forms of photolithography: contact printing, proximity printing and projection printing as schematically illustrated in …”

Optical nanolithography with λ/15 resolution using bowtie aperture array

“…The light emerging from the exit plane is only collimated within tens of nanometers, beyond which it diverges quickly and its intensity decreases significantly [11,12]. Therefore, a precise distance control between the aperture and the recording material (i.e., the photoresist) is required to achieve stable and repeatable sub-diffraction lithography patterns [6,10,13].…”