Prof. Xiang Zhang's Laboratory

at UC Berkeley

Site Updated:
09/18/2008

Plasmonic Lithography

Objective

To develop a novel lithography method utilizing surface plasmons for next generation nano-manufacturing.

Background Material

Surface plasmons (electron oscillations at a metal surface) can offer access to much shorter wavelength compared to the excitation light wavelength. In addition, at the resonant state the e-field intensity of surface plasmons can be boosted by several orders of magnitude compared to the excitation light. These features make surface plasmons very attractive for the applications in nanolithography, near-field microscopy, bio-sensing and bio-photonics.
Fig. 1: Demonstration of a pattern transferring of 90 nm dot array pattern on a 170 nm period obtained by plasmonic nanolithography.

Results

Through the use of surface plamons, we successfully demonstrated a pattern transferring of features as small as 90 nm on a 170 nm period through aluminum hole array mask, which is well below the diffraction limit of far-field optical lithography using i-line light source (365 nm wavelength).[1] The result implies the potential use of surface plasmons in the nanolithography process.[2] We are currently developing fully plasmonic based nano-manufacturing process as part of the on-going research with the NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (Link to http://www.sinam.org)"

 

Representative Papers

[1] “Plasmonic Nanolithography”, W. Srituravanich, N. Fang, C. Sun, Q. Luo and X. Zhang, Nano Lett., 4, 1085-1088 (2004).

[2] “Surface Plasmons Utilized to Achieve High-Density Nanolithography” A. A. Zinn, MRS Bulletin, September 2004, 606-607.

 

 
Questions, comments, or problems with the site? Contact the Webmaster ()