High throughput plasmonic lithography for sub 50nm patterning with a contact probe

We suggest near-field optical lithography that uses contact probe for high speed patterning. The contact probe contains high transmission metal nano aperture and cover-layer for gap distance formation without external feed-back control unit. For contact mode operation, lubricant layer is applied between probe and photoresist surface. Using this contact probe, we recorded 50nm width line pattern with 10mm/s which is 500 times faster than conventional near-field scanning optical microscope lithography. The various line patterns having are recorded as increasing exposure dose and pattern qualities such as line width roughness (LWR) and depth roughness (DR) are evaluated. We expect the contact probe could be extended array probe lithography system for high throughput plasmonic lithography for mass production.