In-situ Interference lithography: a new manufacturing approach for the production of nanostructured arrays

半导体技术的进步使信息处理和通信成为现代互联和应用驱动世界的核心。现代社会对新平台和服务有着巨大的需求，满足这些需求给设备和系统开发带来了相当大的负担。在过去的50年里，半导体制造业通过将器件尺寸缩放到更小的尺寸来满足这些需求。因此，我们现在接近真正的纳米尺度，并寻求尺寸小于10纳米的器件。然而，该行业正面临着巨大的技术和物理挑战，以达到这种精确的规模，相当于只有几个原子层。然而，伴随着这些挑战，新兴的量子设备方法也带来了巨大的潜力，这些方法可以显著提高计算能力，显著提高数据的安全性，同时降低能源成本。我们基于外延、图像化和蚀刻的半导体器件生产工艺将努力将量子技术的前景转化为可制造的商业设备。相比之下，我们可以自然地生长纳米尺度的“自组装”结构，并且从这种材料中我们已经广泛地展示了量子相互作用。然而，自组装有一个致命的弱点，即由于随机成核，我们无法控制位置或尺寸。因此，我们无法预测纳米结构的位置及其能量状态。不出所料，在利用量子技术的可制造设备方面，几乎没有什么进展。我们需要的是一种结合模式和自组装的最佳方面的方法。这种方法是直接自组装（或位点控制），它使用光刻技术来定义位点，然后利用自组装来产生纳米结构。光结构是21世纪的制造技术。现在许多产品都涉及到激光切割、铣削、表面加工、密封等工序。我们的方法寻求在更小的维度上利用光的能力，特别是通过光干涉过程在非常小的阶段上创建规则图案的能力。我们将设计和构建一个系统，其中激光干涉与半导体生长相互作用，以创建一个单步原位制造路线，该路线不受传统高成本，低吞吐量纳米结构方法的所有主要限制。我们将建立并演示一个定制的仪器，其中激光干涉的干涉图案与半导体生长表面相互作用，在规则网格图案上形成自组装的生长。这种排列是开发基于单纳米结构阵列的电子和光子电路的关键要求。该方法的另一个优点是精确控制组装，使阵列在尺寸、形状和电子特性方面包含相同的纳米结构。使用这种方法，我们将创建大面积的最先进的量子点和量子线阵列，这是未来半导体器件必不可少的构建模块，可实现包括电子，光子学，传感和生物医学在内的多种应用。

Information processing and communications enabled by advances in semiconductor technology are at the heart of the modern interconnected and application-driven world. Modern society has an enormous appetite for new platforms and services and meeting these demands places a considerable burden on device and systems development. Over the last 50 years, semiconductor manufacturing has met these demands through a scaling of device size to ever smaller dimensions. As a result, we now approach the true nanoscale regime and seek devices of size less than 10nm. The industry is however facing enormous technological and physical challenges to work at this precise scale, equivalent to only a few atomic layers. Yet with these challenges comes also enormous potential from emerging quantum device approaches which could dramatically increase in calculation capability, dramatically improve the security of data and to do this simultaneously with lower energy costs. Our well used semiconductor device production processes, based on epitaxy, patterning and etch will struggle to turn the promise of quantum technologies into manufacturable commercial devices. In contrast, we can grow naturally 'self assembled' structures with nanometer dimensions and from such materials we have extensively demonstrated quantum interactions. However self-assembly has an Achilles heel in that we cannot control the site or the dimensions because of random nucleation. As a result we cannot predict where the nanostructure is located nor its energy state. Unsurprisingly there has been very little development in terms of manufacturable devices utilising quantum technologies. What we need is an approach which combines the best aspects of patterning and self-assembly. The approach is directed (or site-controlled) self-assembly which uses lithography to define the site and then exploits self-assembly to produce the nanostructure.Structuring with light is the manufacturing technology of the 21st century. Many products now involve cutting, milling, surface processing, sealing etc processes using laser light. Our approach seeks to exploit the capabilities of light at much smaller dimensions, specifically its capability to create regular patterns on a very small stage through the optical interference process. We will design and build a system in which laser interference interacts with semiconductor growth to create a single step in-situ manufacturing route which is free of all major limitations of conventional high cost, low throughput nanostructuring approaches. We will build and demonstrate a custom instrument in which an interference pattern from laser interference interacts with the semiconductor growth surface to nucleate self-assembled growth on a regular grid pattern. Such an arrangement is a key requirement for developing electronic and photonic circuits based on arrays of single nanostructures. The method has the further advantage of precisely controlling assembly such that the array contains identical nanostructures in terms of size, shape and electronic properties. Using this approach we will create large area state of the art quantum dot and quantum wire arrays which are essential building blocks for the semiconductor devices of the future, enabling diverse applications including electronics, photonics, sensing and biomedicine.