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Lithography is one of most important technologies for fabricating micro- and nano-structures. Limited by the light diffraction limit, it becomes more and more difficult to reduce the feature size of lithography. Surface plasmon polariton (SPP) is due to the interaction between electromagnetic wave and oscillation of free-electron on metal surface. For the shorter wavelength, higher field intensity and abnormal dispersion relation, the SPP would play an important role in breaking through the diffraction limit and realizing nanolithography. In this paper, we theoretically and experimentally study the optical nonlinear effect of SPP (two-SPP-absorption) in the photoresist and its application of nanolithography with large field. First, the concept and features of two-SPP-absorption are introduced. Like two-photo-absorption, the two-SPP-absorption based lithography is able to realize nanopatterns beyond the diffraction limit: 1) the absorption rate quadratically depends on the light intensity, which can further squeeze the exposure spot; 2) the pronounced power threshold provides a possibility for precisely controlling the linewidth by manipulating the illumination power. Nevertheless, unlike the two-photo-absorption lithography which focuses light onto a single spot and scans point by point, the two-SPP-absorption method could obtain the subwavelength field pattern by simply illuminating the plasmonic mask. The subwavelength field pattern due to the short wavelength of SPP would further result in the overcoming-diffraction-limit resist pattern. Besides, the highly concentrated SPP field leads to the strong electromagnetic field enhancement at the metal-dielectric interface, which could reduce the input power density of exposure source or enlarge the exposure area. Then the two-SPP absorption is realized under the illuminations of femtosecond lasers with vacuum wavelengths of 800 nm and 400 nm. Meanwhile, the interference periodic patternis realized and it is observed that the linewidth could be adjusted by controlling the exposure dose. The minimum linewidth of resist pattern is only one tenth of the vacuum wavelength. By utilizing the features of two-SPP-absorption, namely shorter wavelength, enhanced field and threshold effect, the lithography field could be of millimeter size, which is about four to five orders of magnitude larger than the characteristic size of nanostructure. Therefore, this two-SPP-absorption scheme could be used for large-area plasmonic lithography beyond the diffraction limit with the help of various plasmonic structures and modes.
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Keywords:
- surface plasmon polariton /
- nano-lithography /
- nonlinear optics /
- diffraction limit
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[22] Raether H 2013 Surface Plasmons on Smooth and Rough Surfaces and on Gratings (Berlin: Springer-Verlag Berlin)
[23] Pines D 1956 Rev. Modern Phys. 28 184
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[25] Chen D Z A 2007 Ph. D. Dissertation (Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
[26] Hopfield J J 1958 Phys. Rev. 112 1555
[27] Li Y, Liu F, Xiao L, Cui K, Feng X, Zhang W, Huang Y 2013 Appl. Phys. Lett. 102 063113
[28] Palik E D 1998 Handbook of Optical Constants of Solids (Vol. 3) (Cambridge: Academic Press)
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[31] Fu Y, Zhou X 2010 Plasmonics 5 287
[32] Carretero-Palacios S, Mahboub O, Garcia-Vidal F J, Martin-Moreno L, Rodrigo S G, Genet C, Ebbesen T W 2011 Opt. Express 19 10429
[33] Gao Y, Gan Q, Bartoli F J 2014 IEEE Photon. J. 6 1
[34] Gao Y, Xin Z, Zeng B, Gan Q, Cheng X, Bartoli F J 2013 Lab on a Chip 13 4755
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[1] Mack C 2008 Fundamental Principles of Optical Lithography: the Science of Microfabrication (Hoboken: John Wiley Sons)
[2] Bakshi V 2009 EUV Lithography (Vol. 178) (Bellingham: Spie Press)
[3] Cumpston B H, Ananthavel S P, Barlow S, Dyer D L, Ehrlich J E, Erskine L L, Heikal A A, Kuebler S M, Lee I Y S, McCord-Maughon D, Qin J 1999 Nature 398 51
[4] Srituravanich W, Fang N, Sun C, Luo Q, Zhang X 2004 Nano Lett. 4 1085
[5] Chou S Y, Krauss P R, Renstrom P J 1996 J. Vacuum Sci. Technol. B: Microelectr. Nanometer Struct. Process. Measur. Phenom. 14 4129
[6] Zhai T, Zhang X, Pang Z, Dou F 2011 Adv. Mater. 23 1860
[7] Zayats A V, Smolyaninov I I, Maradudin A A 2005 Phys. Reports 408 131
[8] Brongersma M L, Kik P G 2007 Surface Plasmon Nanophotonics. (Berlin: Springer)
[9] Srituravanich W, Durant S, Lee H Sun C, Zhang X 2005 J. Vacuum Sci. Technol. B: Microelectr. Nanometer Struct. Process. Measur. Phenom. 23 2636
[10] Luo X, Ishihara T 2004 Appl. Phys. Lett. 84 4780
[11] Seo S, Kim, H C, Ko H, Cheng M 2007 J. Vacuum Sci. Technol. B: Microelectr. Nanometer Struct. Process. Measur. Phenom. 25 2271
[12] Srituravanich W, Pan L, Wang Y, Sun C, Bogy D B, Zhang X 2008 Nature Nanotechnol. 3 733
[13] Pan L, Park Y, Xiong Y, Ulin-Avila E, Wang Y, Zeng L, Xiong S, Rho J, Sun C, Bogy D B, Zhang X 2011 Sci. Reports 1 175
[14] Melville D O, Blaikie R J 2005 Opt. Express 13 2127
[15] Sun H B, Kawata S 2004 In NMR3D Analysis Photopolymerization (Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg) pp169-273
[16] Lee K S, Yang D Y, Park S H, Kim R H 2006 Polym. Adv. Technol. 17 72
[17] Park S H, Yang D Y, Lee K S 2009 Laser Photon. Rev. 3 1
[18] Li Y X 2014 Ph. D. Dissertation (Beijing: Tsinghua University) (in Chinese) [李云翔 2014 博士学位论文 (北京: 清华大学)]
[19] Bellan P M 2008 Fundamentals of Plasma Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
[20] Ritchie R H 1957 Phys. Rev. 106 874
[21] Ponath H E, Stegeman G I 2012 Nonlinear Surface Electromagnetic Phenomena (Vol. 29) (Amsterdam: Elsevier)
[22] Raether H 2013 Surface Plasmons on Smooth and Rough Surfaces and on Gratings (Berlin: Springer-Verlag Berlin)
[23] Pines D 1956 Rev. Modern Phys. 28 184
[24] Raether H 2006 Excitation of Plasmons and Interband Transitions by Electrons (Vol. 88) (Berlin: Springer)
[25] Chen D Z A 2007 Ph. D. Dissertation (Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
[26] Hopfield J J 1958 Phys. Rev. 112 1555
[27] Li Y, Liu F, Xiao L, Cui K, Feng X, Zhang W, Huang Y 2013 Appl. Phys. Lett. 102 063113
[28] Palik E D 1998 Handbook of Optical Constants of Solids (Vol. 3) (Cambridge: Academic Press)
[29] Li Y, Liu F, Ye Y, Meng W, Cui K, Feng X, Zhang W, Huang Y 2014 Appl. Phys. Lett. 104 081115
[30] Meng W S 2015 M. S. Dissertation (Beijing: Tsinghua University) (in Chinese) [孟维思 2015 硕士学位论文 (北京: 清华大学)]
[31] Fu Y, Zhou X 2010 Plasmonics 5 287
[32] Carretero-Palacios S, Mahboub O, Garcia-Vidal F J, Martin-Moreno L, Rodrigo S G, Genet C, Ebbesen T W 2011 Opt. Express 19 10429
[33] Gao Y, Gan Q, Bartoli F J 2014 IEEE Photon. J. 6 1
[34] Gao Y, Xin Z, Zeng B, Gan Q, Cheng X, Bartoli F J 2013 Lab on a Chip 13 4755
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