Focused ion beam lithography for fabrication of suspended nanostructures on highly corrugated surfaces

Abstract

We propose a nanofabrication method that allows for patterning on extremely corrugated surfaces with micrometer-size features. The technique employs focused ion beam nanopatterning of ion-sensitive inorganic resists formed by atomic layer deposition at low temperature. The nanoscale resolution on corrugated surfaces is ensured by inherently large depth of focus of a focused ion beam system and very uniform resist coating. The utilized TiO₂ and Al₂O₃ resists show high selectivity in deep reactive ion etching and enable the release of suspended nanostructures by dry etching. We demonstrate the great flexibility of the process by fabricating suspended nanostructures on flat surfaces, inclined walls, and on the bottom of deep grooves.

Engineering the Future of Silk Materials through Advanced Manufacturing

“…It is realized because the manipulation of silk secondary structures can also be accomplished by ion irradiation. The ions can etch off molecules on the surface of the silk film, as also observed in other types of IBL resist materials . Meanwhile, the IBL writing has other effects on the silk film.…”

3D Volumetric Energy Deposition of Focused Helium Ion Beam Lithography: Visualization, Modeling, and Applications in Nanofabrication

“…Directly patterning materials into 3D micro/nanostructures has recently attracted considerable attention. [20,21] Focused-ion-beam (FIB) processing using Ga ions has also been employed in the fabrication of 3D photonic crystals [22] and other 3D nanostructures in silicon. [20,21] Focused-ion-beam (FIB) processing using Ga ions has also been employed in the fabrication of 3D photonic crystals [22] and other 3D nanostructures in silicon.…”

“…As a scanning focused-ion-beam instrument, HIM can perform high-resolution nanofabrication by milling, [32,33] etching, [34] deposition, [35,36] modification of materials, [37,38] and lithographic patterning in resists. [20,21] Focused-ion-beam (FIB) processing using Ga ions has also been employed in the fabrication of 3D photonic crystals [22] and other 3D nanostructures in silicon. [41] Moreover, the narrow interaction volume of helium ions in resist materials makes HIBL a promising candidate for In this paper, 3D volumetric energy deposition and local crosslinking of hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) are experimentally and numerically explored in focused helium ion beam lithography (HIBL).…”

“…Significant effort has been devoted to investigating methods for defining functional 3D micro/nanoscale structures, including direct material deposition, [7][8][9][10] nanotransfer printing, [11][12][13] inkjet printing, [14] optical lithography, [15][16][17][18] self-assembly, [19] and charged-particle beam lithography. [20,21] Focused-ion-beam (FIB) processing using Ga ions has also been employed in the fabrication of 3D photonic crystals [22] and other 3D nanostructures in silicon. [23] Electron beam lithography (EBL), a prevalent…”

Three dimensional PEDOT nanowires network

“…There are several methods to produce polymer nanostructures. The most commonly used are: electron beam lithography and optical lithography [5], soft template [4,[6][7][8] and finally hard template [9,10]. The last two methods have become very important in the development of many strategies to nanostructure polymeric materials.…”