title: Numerical simulation of nanolithography with the subwavelength metallic grating waveguide structure.
abstract: Metallic waveguide theory has been used to design subwavelength metallic grating waveguide structure which can excite the waveguide modes, especially the low frequency coupled surface plasmons mode, to achieve sub-50nm resolution lithography pattern by using the light with 436nm wavelength. The Finite Difference Time Domain method has been performed to analyze the performance of lithography pattern generated by two possible schemes. One named metal-layer scheme utilizes three different modes (two coupled surface plasmons and one non-coupled surface plasmons) on the metal layer to generate the lithography patterns with different resolution and visibility. The other named metal-cladding scheme excites the coupled mode in the metal-cladding region, which utilizes multi-layer coupled effect to generate the field with higher resolution (~ 34nm) and approximately same visibility compared with the metal-layer scheme. The effectively deviated range of grating period is also analyzed to keep the output pattern effective for the lithography.
authors.forename: Xiaojin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Jiao
authors.forename: Pei
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Douguo
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Ling
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Jianping
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.forename: Hai
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ming