Deep sub-wavelength imaging lithography by a reflective plasmonic slab

By utilizing a reflective plasmonic slab, it is demonstrated numerically and experimentally in this paper deep sub-wavelength imaging lithography for nano characters with about 50nm line width and dense lines with 32nm half pitch resolution (about 1/12 wavelength). Compared with the control experiment without reflective plasmonic slab, resolution and fidelity of imaged resist patterns are remarkably improved especially for isolated nano features. Further numerical simulations show that near field optical proximity corrections help to improve imaging fidelity of two dimensional nano patterns. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America