Nanolithography creates small structures on a nanometer scale. Photolithography is limited by light wavelength, while electron beam lithography achieves smaller dimensions but is more expensive. New technologies promise even smaller sizes. Funding comes from academia, companies, and chip makers.
Nanolithography is a term used to describe a number of techniques for creating incredibly small structures. The dimensions involved are of the order of tens of nanometers (nm). A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, much smaller than the width of a single human hair. The word lithography is used because the pattern generation method is essentially the same as writing, only on a much smaller scale.
A common method of nanolithography, used particularly in the creation of microchips, is known as photolithography. This technique is a parallel method of nanolithography in which the entire surface is drawn in one moment. However, photolithography is limited in the size it can shrink to, because if the wavelength of light used is too small, the lens simply absorbs the light in its entirety. This means that photolithography cannot achieve the superfine dimensions of some alternative technologies.
One technology that allows smaller dimensions than photolithography is that of electron beam lithography. By using an electron beam to draw a pattern nanometer by nanometer, incredibly small dimensions (on the order of 20 nm) can be achieved. Electron beam lithography is much more expensive and time consuming than photolithography, however, making it a tough sell for industrial applications of nanolithography. Because electron beam lithography works more like a dot matrix printer than flash photography, a job that would take five minutes using photolithography will take up to five hours with electron beam lithography.
New nanolithography technologies are constantly being researched and developed, leading to ever smaller and smaller possible sizes. Extreme ultraviolet lithography, for example, is capable of using light at wavelengths of 13.5 nm. While hurdles still exist in this new field, it promises the possibility of sizes far smaller than those produced by current industry standards. Other nanolithography techniques include immersion nanolithography, where a small tip is used to deposit molecules onto a surface. Dip-pen nanolithography can reach very small sizes, but currently cannot go below 40 nm.
Funding for nanolithography research comes from a variety of places, including private academia, forward-thinking companies with an eye to next-generation nanotechnology, and established computer chip makers looking to shrink their chips far below their size. current. As interest in nanotechnology grows within industrial sectors, funding and research will undoubtedly expand into the nanolithography field, leading to more advanced technologies and even lower size limits.
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