Nanolithography techniques for optoelectronic and electronic device fabrication

对更小的电子和光子器件的追求已经将当前的微制造和纳米制造技术推向了基本物理极限的边缘。了解我们如何克服这些限制对现有技术施加的限制，并跨越纳米技术的应许之地，在那里创新将在原子和分子尺度上运作，这已经变得至关重要。拟议的研究计划旨在研究尺寸小于20nm的器件，并探索当前制造技术的极限以及这些极限对某些器件性能的影响。这项工作将依靠电子束光刻技术，这是一项重要的前沿技术，用于探索制造极限和开发新组件和技术。这项技术非常通用，可以轻松快速地改变用于制造电子和光子器件的模式，并探索新的化学和物理策略来制造这些器件。这项工作有助于为创新设备的开发铺平道路，这些设备真正利用了纳米尺度上出现的效应。通过探索用于纳米尺度书写模式的方法所获得的结果也可能对目前正在开发的制造超小型设备的创新方法产生重大影响。一个这样的例子是纳米压印光刻，它使用简单的印章将图案压入软层，以及新的电子束系统，它使用数千束光束使用并行方法在晶圆上写一个大的图案。这两种方法都有助于显著降低编写纳米级模式的成本，并加速将创新思想转化为实际应用。

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.