Plasmonic Lithography for Patterning High Aspect-Ratio Nanostructures: Principle, Experiments, Analyses and Applications

Abstract:

The rapid development of the semiconductor industry in the past decades has driven the advances in nano-manufacturing technologies that have high resolution, provide fast fabrication speed, produce large-area uniformity, and most of all, are cost effective. Along with these advancements, as the size of the devices approaches tens of nanometers, challenges in patterning due to limitations in technology and cost have arisen. To solve these issues, unconventional lithography systems have attracted considerable interest as promising candidates to overcome the diffraction limit. One recent evolving technology, plasmonic lithography, can generate sub-wavelength features utilizing surface plasmon polariton (SPP). Another approach of plasmonic lithography is the hyperbolic metamaterial (HMM) structure, which has been studied intensively because of its unique electromagnetic properties. Especially, epsilon near zero (ENZ) HMM offers the potential to fabricate extremely small features due to its high optical anisotropy. This dissertation consists of four parts: principle, experiments, analyses and applications of plasmonic lithography systems based on SPP waveguide and ENZ HMM for patterning high aspect-ratio nanostructures. A plasmonic roller system is developed to make large-area, continuous sub-wavelength patterns. Other progress towards plasmonic functional device is studied and potential developments of current systems are discussed as well.