Light and matter co-confined multi-photon lithography

Abstract

Mask-free multi-photon lithography enables the fabrication of arbitrary nanostructures low cost and more accessible than conventional lithography. A major challenge for multi-photon lithography is to achieve ultra-high precision and desirable lateral resolution due to the inevitable optical diffraction barrier and proximity effect. Here, we show a strategy, light and matter co-confined multi-photon lithography, to overcome the issues via combining photo-inhibition and chemical quenchers. We deeply explore the quenching mechanism and photoinhibition mechanism for light and matter co-confined multiphoton lithography. Besides, mathematical modeling helps us better understand that the synergy of quencher and photo-inhibition can gain a narrowest distribution of free radicals. By using light and matter co-confined multiphoton lithography, we gain a 30 nm critical dimension and 100 nm lateral resolution, which further decrease the gap with conventional lithography.

Push–Pull Carbazole-Based Dyes: Synthesis, Strong Ultrafast Nonlinear Optical Response, and Effective Photoinitiation for Multiphoton Lithography

“…Thanks to their strong optical nonlinearities, traditional MPL-based 3D printing has successfully achieved high-resolution features of submicrometers . Moreover, more recent studies have demonstrated ongoing advancements in MPL technology, achieving feature sizes below 100 nm. − However, many research groups that assess the effectiveness of PIs by determining TPA cross sections using high-repetition rate (as, e.g., MHz) femtosecond (fs) laser sources have led to the erroneous conclusion that a high cross section is not responsible for high efficiency. − Primarily, under such experimental conditions, unwanted thermal effects inevitably manifest, obscuring pure electronic response contributions to the NLO response . As a result, erroneous extremely large values of the TPA cross section have been reported.…”