Deep Subwavelength Optical Nanolithography
Abstract
Interferometric lithography, the interference of a small number of coherent optical beams, is a powerful technique for the fabrication of a wide array of samples. The techniques and limits of interferometric lithography are discussed with particular attention to the smallest scales achievable. With immersion techniques, the smallest pattern size for a single exposure is a half pitch of lamda/4n were lamda is the optical wavelength and n is the refractive index of the immersion material. Currently with a 193-nm excimer laser source and H2O immersion, this limiting dimension is ~34 nm. With nonlinear spatial frequency multiplication techniques, this limit is extended by factors of 1/2, 1/3, etc.- extending well into the nanoscale regime. Interferometric lithography provides an inexpensive, large-area capability as a result of its parallelism. Imaging interferometric lithography provides an approach to arbitrary structures with comparable resolution. Imaging interferometric microscopy provides an alternative super-resolution technique with application to lithographic mask inspection. Numerous application areas include: nanoscale epitaxial growth for semiconductor heterostructures; nanofluidics for biological separations; nanophotonics including distributed feedback and distributed Bragg reflectors, 2D and 3D photonic crystals, metamaterials and negative refractive index materials for enhanced optical interactions.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 12, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA572334
Entities
People
- Steven Brueck
Organizations
- University of New Mexico