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带到了基本物理极限的边缘。了解我们如何克服这些限制对当前技术的限制，并跨越到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，这一点变得至关重要。拟议的研究计划旨在研究尺寸小于20 nm的器件，并探索当前制造技术的限制以及这些限制对某些器件性能的影响。这项工作将依赖于电子束光刻，这是一种重要的，前沿的技术，用于探索制造极限和开发新的组件和技术。 这种技术是非常通用的，使其能够轻松，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。这项工作可能有助于为开发真正利用纳米级工作时出现的效应的创新设备铺平道路。通过探索用于在纳米级写入图案的方法所获得的结果也可能对目前正在开发的用于制造超小型器件的创新方法产生重大影响。其中一个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，它使用数千个电子束以平行方式在晶片上写入大图案。这两种方法都有助于大幅降低写入纳米级图案的成本，并加速将创新想法转化为真实的应用。

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.