Nanolithography techniques for optoelectronic and electronic device fabrication

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The pursuit of ever smaller electronic and photonic devices has led  current microfabrication and nanofabrication technologies to the edge of fundamental physical limits. It has become critical to understand how we can overcome the restrictions imposed by these limits upon current technology and cross to the promised land of nanotechnology where innovation will operate at the atomic and molecular scale. The proposed research program aims to study devices that include features smaller than 20 nm in size, and to explore the limits of current fabrication technologies and  the impact of these limits on some of the devices' performance. This work will rely on electron beam lithography, which is an important, leading-edge technique for exploring fabrication limits and developing new components and technologies.  This technique is extremely versatile, making it possible to easily and rapidly change the patterns used for making the devices, both electronic and photonic, and to explore new chemical and physical strategies to fabricate these devices. This work could help pave the way for the development of innovative devices that truly exploit the effects that appear when working at the scale of nanometers. The results obtained by exploring the methods used for writing patterns at the nanoscale could also have a significant impact on innovative methods currently being developed for fabricating ultra-small devices. One such example is nano-imprint lithography, which uses simple stamps to press patterns into a soft layer, and new electron beam systems, which make use of thousands of beams to write a large pattern on a wafer using a parallel approach. Both of these methods could help to reduce the cost of writing nanoscale patterns dramatically, and accelerate the transfer of innovative ideas into real applications.