Extreme ultraviolet interference lithography at the Paul Scherrer Institut

We review the performance and applications of an extreme ultraviolet interference lithography (EUV-IL) system built at the Swiss Light Source of the Paul Scherrer Institut (Villigen, Switzerland). The interferometer uses fully coherent radiation from an undulator source. 1-D (line/ space) and 2-D (dot/hole arrays) patterns are obtained with a transmission-diffraction-grating type of interferometer. Features with sizes in the range from one micrometer down to the 10-nm scale can be printed in a variety of resists. The highest resolution of 11-nm half-pitch line/space patterns obtained with this method represents a current record for photon based lithography. Thanks to the excellent performance of the system in terms of pattern resolution, uniformity, size of the patterned area, and the throughput, the system has been used in numerous applications. Here we demonstrate the versatility and effectiveness of this emerging nanolithography method through a review of some of the applications, namely, fabrication of metallic and magnetic nanodevice components, self-assembly of Si/Ge quantum dots, chemical patterning of self-assembled monolayers (SAM), and radiation grafting of polymers. © 2009 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.