title: Pushing the resolution of photolithography down to 15nm by surface plasmon interference.
abstract: A deep ultraviolet plasmonic structure is designed and a surface plasmon interference lithography method using the structure is proposed to generate large-area periodic nanopatterns. By exciting the anti-symmetric coupled surface plasmon polaritons in the structure, ultrahigh resolution periodic patterns can be formed in a photoresist. The resolution of the generated patterns can be tuned by changing the refractive index and thickness of the photoresist. We demonstrate numerically that one-dimensional and two-dimensional patterns with a half-pitch resolution of 14.6 nm can be generated in a 25 nm-thick photoresist by using the structure under 193 nm illumination. Furthermore, the half-pitch resolution of the generated patterns can be down to 13 nm if high refractive index photoresists are used. Our findings open up an avenue to push the half-pitch resolution of photolithography towards 10 nm.
authors.affiliation: School of Optoelectronics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
authors.forename: Jianjie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: School of Optoelectronics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: School of Optoelectronics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
authors.forename: Guoguo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.affiliation: School of Optoelectronics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
authors.forename: Jinghui
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.affiliation: School of Optoelectronics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
authors.forename: Yongtian
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang