Patterning materials efficiently at the smallest length scales has been a longstanding challenge in nanotechnology. Electron-beam lithography (EBL) is the primary method for patterning arbitrary features, but EBL has not reliably provided sub-4 nm patterns. The few competing techniques that have achieved this resolution are orders of magnitude slower than EBL. In this work, we employed an aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope for lithography to achieve unprecedented resolution. Here we show aberration-corrected EBL at the one nanometer length scale using poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and have produced both the smallest isolated feature in any conventional resist (1.7 ± 0.5 nm) and the highest density patterns in PMMA (10.7 nm pitch for negative-tone and 17.5 nm pitch for positive-tone PMMA). We also demonstrate pattern transfer from the resist to semiconductor and metallic materials at the sub-5 nm scale. These results indicate that polymer-based nanofabrication can achieve feature sizes comparable to the Kuhn length of PMMA and ten times smaller than its radius of gyration. Use of aberration-corrected EBL will increase the resolution, speed, and complexity in nanomaterial fabrication.
Manfrinato, Vitor R., et al. "Aberration-Corrected Electron Beam Lithography at the One Nanometer Length Scale." Nano Letters, vol. 17, no. 8, Apr. 2017. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b00514
Manfrinato, Vitor R., Stein, Aaron, Zhang, Lihua, Nam, Chang-Yong, Yager, Kevin G., Stach, Eric A., & Black, Charles T. (2017). Aberration-Corrected Electron Beam Lithography at the One Nanometer Length Scale. Nano Letters, 17(8). https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b00514
Manfrinato, Vitor R., Stein, Aaron, Zhang, Lihua, et al., "Aberration-Corrected Electron Beam Lithography at the One Nanometer Length Scale," Nano Letters 17, no. 8 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b00514
@article{osti_1425048,
author = {Manfrinato, Vitor R. and Stein, Aaron and Zhang, Lihua and Nam, Chang-Yong and Yager, Kevin G. and Stach, Eric A. and Black, Charles T.},
title = {Aberration-Corrected Electron Beam Lithography at the One Nanometer Length Scale},
annote = {Patterning materials efficiently at the smallest length scales has been a longstanding challenge in nanotechnology. Electron-beam lithography (EBL) is the primary method for patterning arbitrary features, but EBL has not reliably provided sub-4 nm patterns. The few competing techniques that have achieved this resolution are orders of magnitude slower than EBL. In this work, we employed an aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope for lithography to achieve unprecedented resolution. Here we show aberration-corrected EBL at the one nanometer length scale using poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and have produced both the smallest isolated feature in any conventional resist (1.7 ± 0.5 nm) and the highest density patterns in PMMA (10.7 nm pitch for negative-tone and 17.5 nm pitch for positive-tone PMMA). We also demonstrate pattern transfer from the resist to semiconductor and metallic materials at the sub-5 nm scale. These results indicate that polymer-based nanofabrication can achieve feature sizes comparable to the Kuhn length of PMMA and ten times smaller than its radius of gyration. Use of aberration-corrected EBL will increase the resolution, speed, and complexity in nanomaterial fabrication.},
doi = {10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b00514},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1425048},
journal = {Nano Letters},
issn = {ISSN 1530-6984},
number = {8},
volume = {17},
place = {United States},
publisher = {American Chemical Society},
year = {2017},
month = {04}}