Surface Percolation and Growth. An alternative scheme for breaking the diffraction limit in optical patterning
Abstract
A nanopatterning scheme is presented by which the structure height can be controlled in the tens of nanometers range and the lateral resolution is a factor at least three times better than the point spread function of the writing beam. The method relies on the initiation of the polymerization mediated by a very inefficient energy transfer from a fluorescent dye molecule after single photon absorption. The mechanism has the following distinctive steps: the dye adsorbs on the substrate surface with a higher concentration than in the bulk, upon illumination it triggers the polymerization, then isolated islands develop and merge into a uniform structure (percolation), which subsequently grows until the illumination is interrupted. This percolation mechanism has a threshold that introduces the needed nonlinearity for the fabrication of structures beyond the diffraction limit.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1001.2217,
title = {Surface Percolation and Growth. An alternative scheme for breaking the diffraction limit in optical patterning},
author = {D. Kunik and L. I. Pietrasanta and O. E. Martínez},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1001.2217},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
10 pages, 8 figures