Nanopost-guided self-organization of dendritic inorganic salt structures.

The formation of hierarchical architectures is of fundamental importance and yet a relatively elusive problem concerning many natural and industrial processes. In this paper, a nanopost array platform, or a nanopost substrate, has been developed to address this issue through a model study of the drying structures of phosphate buffered saline (PBS) solution. Unlike on a plain surface, highly ramified salt structures are formed by simply allowing the nanopost substrate wetted with the salt solution to dry, a process that completes within minutes at room temperature. The branches of salt structures have similar shapes repeating at different length scales, ranging from ∼200 nm up to a few centimeters in length, covering a 2 × 2 cm(2) area patterned with nanoposts fabricated in photoresist via laser interference lithography (LIL). Scanning electromicrograph (SEM) images show that salt structures are formed around nanoposts, and characteristic features of these salt structures can be modulated and predicted based on the surface properties and geometrical arrangements of nanoposts, suggesting that nanoposts can be used to guide the organization and crystallization of salts. This nanopost-guided crystallization approach is robust, rapid, versatile, and amenable to real-time observation and mass production, providing a great opportunity for the study and creation of large-scale hierarchical structures.

Improving feature size uniformity from interference lithography systems with non-uniform intensity profiles.

The non-uniform intensity profile of Gaussian-like laser beams used in interference lithography (IL) leads to a non-uniform dose and feature size distribution across the sample. Previously described methods to improve dose uniformity are reviewed. However, here we examine the behavior of the non-uniformity from the viewpoint of photoresist response rather than the IL system configuration. Samples with a fixed intra-sample dose profile were exposed with an increasing average dose. A line/space pattern with a period of 240 nm across an area of 2 × 2 cm(2) was produced using IL on identical samples using a HeCd laser operated at 325 nm and a Lloyd's mirror IL system. A binary model of photoresist response predicts that the absolute range of line widths in nanometers should be significantly reduced as the overall sample dose is increased. We have experimentally verified a reduction in the range of line widths within a given sample from 50 to 16 nm as the overall dose is increased by only 60%. This resulted in a drop in the narrowest line width from 120 to 65 nm. An etch process is demonstrated to increase the line width by generating a wider secondary chrome hard mask from the narrowly patterned primary chrome hard mask. The subsequent fabrication of a silicon nanoimprint mold is used as a demonstration of the technique.

Post-lithography pattern modification and its application to a tunable wire grid polarizer.

This study reports a simple and cost-effective post-lithography solution for reducing the characteristic dimensions of structures on the nanometer scale using an external mechanical force without any modification of the existing exposure system. In particular, this study presents a tunable aluminum wire grid polarizer (WGP) made by a laser interference lithography and i-line (365 nm) exposure setup on polyethylene naphthalate. The WGP achieves a 58% maximum linewidth shrinkage of the metal nanowire on the polymer substrate, and further improved the polarization extinction ratio by 83% with a defined operation window and optimized strain. The simulations in this study prove the rise of the extinction ratio with the modulation of the WGP pattern. Physical evidence explains the fall of the extinction ratio for both the increase of the metal crack volume and the delaminated randomly oriented fall-on fragments under extensive operation.