Maskless Lithography Using Surface Plasmon Enhanced Illumination

摘要

The ability of surface plasmon enhanced illumination (SPEI) devices to use visible wavelengths to expose photoresist with subwavelength features has been demonstrated and a manuscript is being prepared for submission to PNAS. The SPEI devices consist of a regular array of nanometric features in a metal/dielectric laminate device that transmit light via extraordinary optical transmission (EOT) with a semicollimated beam of light. This beam of light is scanned across a photoresist coated wafer to expose the photoresist and create the desired pattern. In this project SPEI devices and probes were created, a nanoscale scanner was designed and fabricated, and photoresist was developed to determine the geometric properties of the beam of light emitted from these SPEI devices, and a system throughput study was prepared to assess the throughput of a SPEI system when incorporated into a stepper system. The fundamental feasibility of this approach has been demonstrated. Harvard's licensing office is currently in discussions with Zeiss to commercialize this technology for the semiconductor industry.