High Resolution Unconventional Lithography for Advanced Materials

先进的材料和技术支撑着一个重要的研究基础，并与工业合作伙伴合作，以确定日常生活和社会的潜在应用。电子、量子和自旋电子设备与纳米科学相结合，有可能颠覆现有技术，提供增强的性能。这些设备将具有广泛的潜在应用，并将影响各个部门，如能源、纳米技术、医疗保健和传感器。先进材料的纳米和量子技术器件应用需要精确制造纳米尺度的图案，以及具有内在功能的材料的纳米结构。目前已有几种纳米加工工具，其中电子束光刻技术在学术界广泛应用于纳米尺度特征的书写。然而，该方法存在一些局限性，如难以在大面积上生成任意和复杂的纳米图案、需要高真空条件、只能选择少数基板、耗时等，这些都限制了高通量和昂贵的生产成本。值得注意的是，纳米制造仍然具有挑战性，大多数技术受其分辨率和速度的限制。因此，迫切需要最先进的制造基础设施，以高速，简单和经济有效的方法提供纳米空间分辨率，以开发新型设备及其规模。提议的非常规高分辨率纳米制造设施HiRes将是一个新的国家设施，并将为先进纳米级材料的制备和表征提供“缺失的工具”。HiRes工具使用直接加热探针光刻技术，以高速、精确和可靠的方式生产20nm以下的特征。传统的光刻技术能够使用电子或离子产生这种狭窄的结构，但是它们可能会导致结构损坏，易于在制造过程中产生聚合物抗蚀剂残留物，并且通常与新材料不相容。HiRes提供了一种改变游戏规则的技术，具有高分辨率（最小演示特征尺寸为7nm），无损伤光刻（热是刺激因素），多层3D纳米结构，高速（1mm /s），无标记覆盖，相关拼接，适用于新兴材料并与各种基材（包括柔性和可穿戴设备，生物材料）兼容。HiRes能够制造具有高分辨率的纳米级特征，用于高性能计算、高密度数据存储、太赫兹范围内的设备、亚波长波导、光子晶体和等离子体结构等应用。HiRes纳米制造和表面表征套件将安装在曼彻斯特大学的国家石墨烯研究所（NGI）内，并将为纳米制造和先进功能材料的研究提供前所未有的能力。这是一个国家级纳米制造设施，拥有英国/欧盟最大的洁净室设施之一，是石墨烯和其他二维材料研究的世界领先中心。通过NGI和亨利·罗伊斯研究所（英国国家先进材料研究所），英国学者和从事这一领域研究的行业将可以使用HiRes。我们希望这个尖端的设施既能促进雄心勃勃的多学科合作研究，也能为新的令人兴奋的研究提供一个平台，特别是为我们的早期职业研究人员。

Advanced materials and technologies underpin a significant research base and engagement with the industrial partners to identify the potential applications for everyday life and society. Electronic, quantum and spintronic devices integrated with nanoscience, have the potential to disrupt the existing technologies, providing enhanced performance. Such devices will have a wide range of potential applications and will influence various sectors, such as energy, nanotechnology, healthcare, and sensors.Nano- and quantum technology device applications with advanced materials require precise fabrication of nanoscale patterns, and nanostructuring of materials that exhibit an intrinsic functionality. There are several existing nanofabrication tools and among all electron-beam lithography is extensively used in academia for writing nanoscale features. However, there are several limitations - difficulty to generate arbitrary and complex nanopatterns on large areas, need of high vacuum conditions, selective to only few substrates, time consuming, which all limit the high throughput and make the production expensive. Notably, nanofabrication remains challenging, with majority of techniques limited by their resolution and speed. There is therefore an urgent need for stat-of-the-art fabrication infrastructure that can provide nanometer spatial resolution with high speed, simple and cost effective methodologies to develop novel devices and their scale-up.The proposed unconventional high-resolution nanofabrication facility, HiRes, will be a new national facility and will provide the 'missing tool' for advanced nanoscale material preparation and characterisation. The HiRes tools produce features below 20 nm with high speed, precision and reliability using direct heated probe lithography. The conventional lithographic techniques capable of producing such narrow structures use electrons or ions, however they may induce structural damage, are prone to polymeric resist residues from the fabrication process, and often incompatible with new materials. HiRes offers a game-changer technology with high-resolution (minimum demonstrated feature size 7 nm), damage-free lithography (heat is the stimulus), 3D nanostructuring of multiple levels, high speed (1 mm/s), marker-less overlay, correlation stitching, adaptable to emerging materials and compatible with a variety of substrates (including flexible and wearables, biomaterials). HiRes enables the fabrication of nanoscale features with high resolution for applications in high performance computing, high density data storage, devices operating in THz range, sub-wavelength waveguides, photonic crystals and plasmonic structures, to name a few.The HiRes nanofabrication and surface characterization suite will be installed within the National Graphene Institute (NGI) at the University of Manchester and will provide unprecedented capability for nanofabrication and advanced functional materials research. This is a national nanofabrication facility which has one of the largest such cleanroom facilities in the UK/EU, and is a world leading centre for research on graphene and other 2D materials. Access to the HiRes will be made available to UK academics and industry undertaking research in this area through the NGI and Henry Royce Institute, UK national facility for Advanced Materials. We expect this cutting edge facility will both foster ambitious multidisciplinary collaborative research, and provide a platform for new exciting research, particularly for our early career researchers.