Ultra-deep subwavelength periodic patterning through multilayered metamaterial microcavity

A designed multilayered metamaterial cavity formed by the metallo-dielectric multilayer structure (MDMS) and a nano Aluminum layer coated substrate is exploited to achieve the sub-20 nm patterns feature sizes at the wavelength of 248 nm with p-polarization. The filtering and SPP cavity resonance coupling provided by this MDMS cavity regime enable the SPP interference patterns with high uniformity and intensity output in the photoresist (PR) layer. Furthermore, compared with the conventional grating metal waveguide structure, this lithography system demonstrates the better stability of patterns period against the cavity thickness variation. The enhancement and the longitudinal extension of SPP localized field offered by the proposed cavity scheme will provide a potential way to obtain the lithography patterns with improved depth, contrast and perpendicularity.

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