Study on advanced nanoscale near-field photolithography

At present, applying a near‐field optical microscope to photolithographic line segment fabrication can only obtain nanoscale line segments of equal cutting depths, and cannot result in 3D shape fabrication. This study proposes an innovative line segment fabrication model of near‐field photolithography that adjusts an optical fiber probe's field distance to control the exposure energy density, and moreover constructs an exposure energy density analysis method of the innovative photolithographic line segment fabrication. During the exposure simulation process of the innovative line segment fabrication model of near‐field photolithography, the near‐field distance between the optical fiber probe and the photoresist surface increases gradually, whereas the exposure energy density distribution decreases gradually. As a result, the cutting depth becomes shallower and the full‐width at half maximum (FWHM) increases. The results of this study can serve as a theoretical reference for developing advanced nanoscale near‐field photolithography techniques, to which an important and groundbreaking contribution is made. SCANNING 32: 351–360, 2010. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.