A diffractometer for quality control in nano fabrication processing based on subwavelength diffraction

摘要

Mass production of nanostructured surfaces relies on the periodic repetition of micrometre scale patterns. A unit cell with nanometre features in the micrometre size range is repeated thousands of times. The ensemble can used as a diffraction grating for visible light. The relative intensity distribution of the diffraction orders is characteristic for the grating and sensitive to nanometre scale changes. A newly designed subwavelength diffraction setup allows the measurement in real time of the diffraction pattern of an illuminated polymer grating with only one detector image. The setup records diffraction patterns of, for example, polymer gratings with intentionally low scattering contrast and line features ranging from 610 to 80 nm. Thus, sub-100 nm features can be traced. The comparison of the measured diffraction patterns with simulated patterns allows to sense nanometre scale deviations from fabrication goals.