Nanolithography

Nanolithography is the branch of nanotechnology concerned with the study and application of fabricating nanometer-scale structures, meaning patterns with at least one lateral dimension between 1 and 100 nm. Different approaches can be categorized in serial or parallel, mask or maskless/direct-write, top-down or bottom-up, beam or tip-based, resist-based or resist-less methods. As of 2015, nanolithography is a very active area of research in academia and in industry. Applications of nanolithography include among others: Multigate devices such as Field effect transistors (FET), Quantum dots, Nanowires, Gratings, Zone plates and Photomasks, nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS), or semiconductor integrated circuits (nanocircuitry).

Optical lithography, which has been the predominant patterning technique since the advent of the semiconductor age, is capable of producing sub-100-nm patterns with the use of very short optical wavelengths. Several optical lithography techniques require the use of liquid immersion and a host of resolution enhancement technologies like phase-shift masks (PSM) and optical proximity correction (OPC). Multiple patterning is a method of increasing the resolution by printing features in between pre-printed features on the same layer by etching or creating sidewall spacers, and has been used in commercial production of microprocessors since the 32 nm process node e.g. by directed self-assembly (DSA). Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) uses ultrashort wavelengths (13.5 nm) and as of 2015, is the most popularly considered Next-generation lithography (NGL) technique for mass-fabrication.

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