Development of a Novel Blue Laser Direct Writing Lithography Technology

Features:
Current approaches for nano-lithography -- such as Laser beam lithography, Near field lithography, or E-beam lithography -- are all expensive and require large areas. Now these can be replaced by Visible Light Laser Direct Writing Technology.

ITRI has developed the new technology of Nano-scale Visible Light Laser Direct Writing and a patented thermal lithography material. It simplifies the complex conventional nano scale fabrication down to only 5 processes.
Visible Light Laser Direct Writing Technology adopts a novel optical head-like opto-mechanical system using semiconductor laser diode as the light source. This is the space distribution of laser Gaussian beam; the red part of the laser Gaussian beam has the highest power density, but this is only a very small part, occupying less than one third to one fourth of the side lobs of the entire Gaussian beam.

Along with the patented thermal lithography material developed by ITRI, a specific inorganic material with sub-diffraction-limit resolution that can effectively reduce the writing laser spot size and overcome the optical diffraction limit was developed. This material converts the light energy emitted by blue laser diode into heat as a result of photothermal effect. The structure and chemistry behavior of the exposed area will be changed by photothermal effect. Finally, the nano-structured pattern with the scale of 150 nanometers or less can be achieved.

Description:
This technology has the following advantages:
1. Provides a total solution for nano-structured fabrication.
2. The nanoscale resolution is achieved by a near visible light source .
3. Highly precise and reliable nano-fabrication process, with focus error less than 25 nm, and pitch error less than 10 nm.
4. Lower costs for equipment, maintenance, and user training.
5. Low chemical consumption and waste.
6. Can be combined with Nanoimprint Lithography so it can be applied to large area, high yield, high precision nano-structured processing to overcome the limits of conventional approaches.

In the future, low cost nano structured processing will become more widely applied, for example in opto-electronic components or biosensors. Production technologies that are high power-consuming or polluting will be replaced by new technologies that are energy efficient and clean.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• POPNano
• Nano