SBIR Phase I: Optical-Maskless-Lithography Equipment

这一小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段研究项目是朝着构建光学无掩模光刻技术迈出的一步，该技术可以彻底改变MEMS、微流体、生物芯片、微电子、微光子学、微磁学和纳米技术等各种应用的图案化。传统的纳米级光刻技术已经发展成为一种极其昂贵、复杂和缓慢的技术，尤其是对非曼哈顿几何图形的图案化。该公司的波带板阵列光刻(ZPAL)摒弃了昂贵的光掩模，使用了大量聚焦光束，以实现写入速度的数量级提高。在该项目中，该公司致力于实现功能性ZPAL系统的两项主要工作：(1)开发(通过复制或以其他方式)制造波带片阵列的可靠技术，每个波带板包含超过1000块波带板；(2)开发用于ZPAL的干涉空间相位成像(ISPI)技术，该技术可以实现低于5 nm的多能级(覆盖)对准精度。如果成功，这个项目将比现有系统有两个显著的优势。第一种是比投影系统成本低，第二种是与扫描电子束系统相比，它将节省大量的时间。ZPAL形式的无掩模光学光刻有望满足半导体行业以及其他和新兴应用的分辨率、吞吐量和其他要求。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I research project is a step towards building an optical-maskless-lithography technology that could revolutionize patterning for a large variety of applications such as MEMs, microfluidics, biochips, microelectronics, microphotonics, micromagnetics, and nanotechnology. Conventional lithography in the nanoscale has evolved into an extremely expensive, complex, and slow technology, especially for patterning non-manhattan geometries. The company's Zone-Plate-Array Lithography (ZPAL) gets rid of the expensive photomask, and uses a large number of focused-optical beams in order to achieve orders-of-magnitude improvement in writing speed. In this project the company addresses two main thrusts towards achieving a functional ZPAL system: (1) development of a robust technique for the manufacture (by replication or otherwise) of zone-plate arrays, each containing over 1000 zone plates; and, (2) development of an interferometric-spatial-phase-imaging (ISPI) technique for ZPAL that can achieve sub-5nm multi-level (overlay) alignment accuracy. If successful, this project will result in two significant advantages over existing systems. The first one is lower cost than projection systems and the second one is that it will provide large savings in time compared to scanning-electron-beam systems. Maskless optical lithography in the form of ZPAL holds the promise of meeting the resolution, throughput and other requirements of the semiconductor industry, as well as those of the other and emerging applications.