STTR Phase I: A Nanolithography System for Low Cost Nanostructures Research and Applications

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This Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project will experimentally demonstrate that a tabletop point x-ray source reduces exposure time by a factor of at least 100. The university partners in this project have demonstrated deep-sub-100 nm nanolithography using soft x-rays which enables fabrication of complex nanostructures with precision and accuracy on planar substrates. However, the potential of soft x-ray nanolithography has been severely limited by the lack of inexpensive soft x-ray exposure tools. Electron-bombardment point sources, which are currently used, have low power and efficiencies of O.01%. As a result, it takes several hours to complete an exposure. SRL and its university partner propose to build a tabletop, dense plasma focus, x-ray exposure source that will have efficiencies of 1-2%. The plasma source, which will be capable of radiating 10-20 watts of usable soft x-rays into 4 steradians, will reduce the exposure time by a factor of 100 or more. In Phase II, SRL will fabricate a 100 pps source with the goal of creating a compact package that can be commercialized. Deep-sub 100 nm lithography has potential applications in the biological sciences, thin films, optical components, displays and sensors, nanoelectronics and the organization and manipulation of macromolecules and nanoparticles. In addition, a high power, kilowatt-class x-ray point source would provide a modular, affordable proximity source for x-ray lithography. The commercial market for non-semiconductor applications is predicted to be greater than $200 million annually. A low cost, compact deep-sub-100nm lithography system is essential to exploiting these applications.