Beam pen lithography based on arrayed polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) micro-pyramids spin-coated with carbon black photo-resist

This paper presents a new method for preparing a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) mold which can be used in beam pen lithography for patterning a photo-resist (PR) layer in a maskless and direct-write manner. The PDMS mold contains an array of micro-pyramids on its surface and is spin-coated with a layer of carbon black PR which is an opaque material. Because of the arrayed pyramidal surface profile, the spin-coated carbon black PR layer is either thinner at the pyramid tips or does not cover the tips at all, which allows ultraviolet (UV) light to pass through the PDMS mold and forms an array of UV beams. The aperture size of the UV beams can be controlled at a sub-micrometer scale and hence can be used for micro/nano-patterning. Applying this carbon black-PR-coated PDMS mold in beam pen lithography along with a metal lift-off process, various metal dot patterns with a dot-size around 400 to 500 nm are successfully obtained. Both experimental results and theoretical analysis are given along with possible improvements and applications in the future.