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Originally published in Science Express on 9 April 2009
Science 15 May 2009:
Vol. 324. no. 5929, pp. 917 - 921
DOI: 10.1126/science.1167704
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Reports

Confining Light to Deep Subwavelength Dimensions to Enable Optical Nanopatterning

Trisha L. Andrew,1 Hsin-Yu Tsai,2,3 Rajesh Menon3,4,*

In the past, the formation of microscale patterns in the far field by light has been diffractively limited in resolution to roughly half the wavelength of the radiation used. Here, we demonstrate lines with an average width of 36 nanometers (nm), about one-tenth the illuminating wavelength {lambda}1 = 325 nm, made by applying a film of thermally stable photochromic molecules above the photoresist. Simultaneous irradiation of a second wavelength, {lambda}2 = 633 nm, renders the film opaque to the writing beam except at nodal sites, which let through a spatially constrained segment of incident {lambda}1 light, allowing subdiffractional patterning. The same experiment also demonstrates a patterning of periodic lines whose widths are about one-tenth their period, which is far smaller than what has been thought to be lithographically possible.

1 Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
2 Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
3 Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
4 LumArray, Somerville, MA 02143, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rmenon{at}mit.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Two Beams Squeeze Feature Sizes in Optical Lithography.
J. W. Perry (2009)
Science 324, 892-893
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