Nanolithography with negative index materials.

The DoD has a strong motivation to foster low cost nanolithography techniques ~ its IC requirements are in small volumes, thus tooling and masking costs cannot be amortized over large volumes and represents a very large number. The costs associated with the nanolithography step can be ascribed to the diffraction limit of light. Recently, it was shown that the diffraction limit of light could be circumvented by the use of materials with “negative refractive index”. Lenses that operate beyond the diffraction limit were demonstrated at 365 nm working wavelength. Tanner is proposing the use of such negative index materials as the critical enabling technology in a low cost nanolithography system. In Phase I, we demonstrated that negative index materials could be realistically fabricated at 193 nm (the working wavelength for current nanolithography systems). In Phase II, we will extend the work to a physical demonstration of a farfield superlens (FSL), a nearfield superlens, and a projection hyperlens. We will also work with the semiconductor industry to develop a design for a lithography system, along with a complete set of metrics that would be of interest to the industry.