Electron-beam lithography

About: Electron-beam lithography is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 8982 publications have been published within this topic receiving 143325 citations. The topic is also known as: e-beam lithography.

Fabrication of half-pitch 32nm resist patterns using near-field lithography with a-Si mask

Abstract: We evaluated the performances of Cr and amorphous Si (a-Si) films as light absorber materials for photomasks of near-field lithography on the basis of numerical studies using finite-difference time domain method and experimental results of fabrication process. With exposure experiments using both a Cr mask and an a-Si mask, fine performance of an a-Si near-field mask was demonstrated with respect to resolution. A half-pitch 32nm resist pattern of 120nm high was fabricated through the near-field lithography using the a-Si mask and a subsequent trilayer resist process.

Photoluminescence study of deep etched InGaAs/GaAs quantum wires and dots defined by low‐voltage electron beam lithography

Abstract: Combining low‐voltage electron beam lithography (EBL) and wet chemical etching, arrays of deep etched InGaAs/GaAs quantum wires with widths down to 15 nm and dots with minimum diameters of 27 nm have been fabricated. The application of low‐voltage EBL strongly reduces the proximity effect during pattern exposure and allows the formation of very homogeneous nanostructure arrays. Low‐excitation photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy of both wires and dots reveals a structure size dependent blue shift of the emission lines up to 14 meV. This energy shift is caused by lateral confinement and shows a clear dependence on the structure dimensionality. The quantization is calculated with a simple model using only standard InGaAs/GaAs material parameters and the geometrical structure widths measured with a scanning electron microscope (SEM).

Effect of molecular adsorption on the electrical conductance of single au nanowires fabricated by electron-beam lithography and focused ion beam etching.

Abstract: Metal nanowires are one of the potential candidates for nanostructured sensing elements used in future portable devices for chemical detection; however, the optimal methods for fabrication have yet to be fully explored. Two routes to nanowire fabrication, electron-beam lithography (EBL) and focused ion beam (FIB) etching, are studied, and their electrical and chemical sensing properties are compared. Although nanowires fabricated by both techniques exhibit ohmic conductance, I-V characterization indicates that nanowires fabricated by FIB etching exhibit abnormally high resistivity. In addition, the resistivity of nanowires fabricated by FIB etching shows very low sensitivity toward molecular adsorption, while those fabricated by EBL exhibit sensitive resistance change upon exposure to solution-phase adsorbates. The mean grain sizes of nanowires prepared by FIB etching are much smaller than those fabricated by EBL, so their resistance is dominated by grain-boundary scattering. As a result, these nanowires are much less sensitive to molecular adsorption, which mediates nanowire conduction through surface scattering. The much reduced mean grain sizes of these nanowires correlate with Ga ion damage caused during the ion milling process. Thus, even though the nanowires prepared by FIB etching can be smaller than their EBL counterparts, their reduced sensitivity to adsorption suggests that nanowires produced by EBL are preferred for chemical and biochemical sensing applications.

Electron-beam lithography for micro and nano-optical applications

Abstract: Direct-write electron-beam lithography has proven to be a powerful technique for fabricating a variety of micro- and nano-optical devices. Binary E-beam lithography is the workhorse technique for fabricating optical devices that require complicated precision nano-scale features. We describe a bi-layer resist system and virtual-mark height measurement for improving the reliability of fabricating binary patterns. Analog E-beam lithography is a newer technique that has found significant application in the fabrication of diffractive optical elements. We describe our techniques for fabricating analog surface-relief profiles in E-beam resist, including some discussion regarding overcoming the problems of resist heating and charging. We also describe a multiple-field-size exposure scheme for suppression of field-stitch induced ghost diffraction orders produced by blazed diffraction gratings on non-flat substrates.