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.

The interaction of human bone marrow cells with nanotopographical features in three dimensional constructs.

Abstract: Until now, nanotopography has been considered in 2D construct designs. This has been due to fabrication limitations with traditional lithographic processes relying on the ability to focus radiation that will expose a radiation sensitive resist (e.g. photolithography and electron beam lithography). More recently, alternative methods that offer rapid and cheap nanofabrication have been developed; such methods include polymer demixing and colloidal lithography. Polymer demixing in 2D has relied on spin casting of polymer blends-such as polystyrene and polybromostyrene in a solvent such as toluene. As the solvent evaporates, the polymers phase separate and form nanoislands. In this study, the polymer blend solution has been blown through fine tubes and allowed to demix, thus providing 3D constructs for cell biology. The ability to fabricate in tubes may be useful in many applications, for example stents, conduits, and bone repair (when considering structures such as Haversian tubes and Volkmann's canals). As proof of concept, human osteoprogenitor cells have been used to test the cell response to the nanopatterned tubes. The results show that nanofeatures of size X, diameter Y, and spacing Z decrease cell spreading, reduce cytoskeletal organization, and increase endocytotic activity within the cells.

Facile Nanocasting of Dielectric Metasurfaces with Sub-100 nm Resolution

Abstract: This work presents a facile nanocasting technique to fabricate dielectric metasurfaces at low cost and high throughput. A flexible polymer mold is replicated from a master mold, and then the polymer mold is used to shape particle-embedded UV-curable polymer resin. The polymer mold is compatible with flexible and curved substrates. A hard-polydimethylsiloxane improves mechanical stability of the polymer mold providing sub-100 nm patterning resolution. The patterned resin itself can work as a metasurface without secondary operations because dielectric particles sufficiently increase the refractive index of the resin. The absence of the secondary operations allows our method to have higher productivity and cost competitiveness than those of typical nanoimprint lithography. Experimental demonstration verifies the feasibility of our method, and the replicated metasurface exhibits a conversion efficiency of 46% in the visible, which is comparable to metasurfaces based on low-loss dielectrics. Given that conventional dielectric metasurfaces have been fabricated by electron beam lithography at formidable cost due to low throughput, our method will be a promising nanofabrication platform and thereby facilitate commercialization of dielectric metasurfaces.

X-Ray Lithography: A Complementary Technique to Electron Beam Lithography

Abstract: X-ray lithography provides a means of replicating, in a single large-area exposure, submicron linewidth patterns made by scanning electron beam lithography. The technique is complementary to existing electron beam technology, and provides a number of unique advantages: (i) it is simple and inexpensive; (ii) the penetrating character of x-rays makes it relatively insensitive to contamination; (iii) both positive and negative type resists can be used; and (iv) because of the absence of backscattering effects, both positive and negative type patterns can be made with equal facility. Exposure times of seven minutes have been achieved for 3 μ mask-sample gaps. This can be decreased to less than one minute by using a rotating anode, or by reducing the mask-sample gap. The most recent results in x-ray lithography are reported, including the fabrication of surface wave devices. The elements of a multiple-mask alignment system are described. This system should permit the rapid and automatic superposition on a substrate of patterns from several different masks, to a precision of 1/10 μ.