Focused ion beam high resolution grayscale lithography for silicon-based nanostructures

Nanofabrication techniques providing a fine control over the profile of silicon structures are of great importance for nanophotonics, plasmonics, sensing, micro-and nano fluidics, and biomedical applications. We report on the applicability of focused ion beam for the fine grayscale lithography, which yields surface profiles that are customized at nanoscale. The approach is based on a correlation between the ion beam irradiation dose of inorganic resist and the mask etching rate in the reactive ion etching. An exceptional property of this method is the number of gray tones that are not limited by the resist characteristics. We apply the process to fabricate unique periodic nanostructures with a slope angle varying across the structure and a period as small as 200 nm. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.