Patterning method could aid scaling

摘要

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology claim to have discovered an "absor-bance-modulation" method for patterning lines onto a microchip that has produced lines just 36 nm wide. The key to the method is the use of interference patterns, in which different wavelengths of light sometimes reinforce and sometimes cancel each other. Researchers use a photochro-mic material, which changes its color and switches between transparency and opacity and vice versa by exposure to a pair of patterns, each of a different wavelength. The researchers admit that photochromic materials are not new but claim that they have found a way to create a mask with fine lines of transparency and that they can then use the mask to create a correspondingly fine line on the underlying material.