STTR Phase I: A Nanolithography System for Low Cost Nanostructures Research and Applications

STTR 第一阶段：用于低成本纳米结构研究和应用的纳米光刻系统

• 批准号: 9903737
• 负责人: Rodney Petr
• 金额: $ 9.99万
• 依托单位: Science Research Laboratory Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-07-01 至 2000-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9903737&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: STTR; Phase; Nanolithography; System; Low

This Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project will experimentally demonstrate that a tabletop point x-ray source reduces exposure time by a factor of at least 100. The university partners in this project have demonstrated deep-sub-100 nm nanolithography using soft x-rays which enables fabrication of complex nanostructures with precision and accuracy on planar substrates. However, the potential of soft x-ray nanolithography has been severely limited by the lack of inexpensive soft x-ray exposure tools. Electron-bombardment point sources, which are currently used, have low power and efficiencies of O.01%. As a result, it takes several hours to complete an exposure. SRL and its university partner propose to build a tabletop, dense plasma focus, x-ray exposure source that will have efficiencies of 1-2%. The plasma source, which will be capable of radiating 10-20 watts of usable soft x-rays into 4 steradians, will reduce the exposure time by a factor of 100 or more. In Phase II, SRL will fabricate a 100 pps source with the goal of creating a compact package that can be commercialized. Deep-sub 100 nm lithography has potential applications in the biological sciences, thin films, optical components, displays and sensors, nanoelectronics and the organization and manipulation of macromolecules and nanoparticles. In addition, a high power, kilowatt-class x-ray point source would provide a modular, affordable proximity source for x-ray lithography. The commercial market for non-semiconductor applications is predicted to be greater than $200 million annually. A low cost, compact deep-sub-100nm lithography system is essential to exploiting these applications.