Selection of the confining beam for laser direct writing with scanning absorbance modulation

Absorbance-modulation optical lithography has been proposed to obtain super-resolution grating patterns with far-field optics. However, the patterns are monotonous since the interference fringes are used as the confining beam. We propose laser direct writing with scanning absorbance modulation to produce free super-resolution patterns. Four kinds of optical vortex beams are studied as the confining beam and the performance of scanning absorbance modulation using each of them is simulated. In conclusion, the selection of the best confining beam has to follow three criteria and an example is the 2-level, 1.5-order optical vortex beam.