Regular Article

Surface plasmons superresolution nanolithography technique by using polydimethylsiloxane soft mold based on light coupling

¹ The Institute of Optics and Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610209, PR China
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, PR China

^* e-mail: xcdong123@126.com

Received: 23 June 2018
Received in final form: 14 August 2018
Accepted: 20 August 2018
Published online: 10 October 2018

Abstract

We proposed a novel surface plasmons (SP) nanolithography technique based on light coupling, which adopts the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) soft mold to replace the ordinary hard mask. By using the light coupling effect of PDMS mold and the SP resonance effect of silver layer, the nanolithography technique could realize the superresolution lithography with a resolution of 1/10 of exposure wavelength and a high contrast ratio of 0.97. By the numerical simulation, we calculated the electric field distribution, analyzed the influence of the linewidth of PDMS soft mold and the thickness of silver layer on the proposed nanolithography system. The calculated results indicate the physics mechanism that the silver layer acts not only as an amplifier for high-frequency energy, but also as a blocker for the low-frequency energy. The optimal linewidth and silver layer thickness are obtained, which can promote the contrast ratio to 0.99.