In the electron beam lithography nanostructures are fabricated by scanning a modulated, very narrow beam of accelerated electrons over an electron sensitive resist material. The scanning of the beam is controlled via electrostatic and magnetic lenses.

The interaction between the electrons and the polymer matrix of the resist leads to different solubility of exposed and unexposed areas in specific development liquids.Therefore, during the subsequent development step exposed and unexposed resist areas are separated and the nanostructures are uncovered. Etch or deposition processes can be applied to continue the fabrication.

Electron beam lithography is a very flexible tool for fabricating arbitrary patterns with resolution down to few nm.

It is used in mask and nanoimprint template writing, prototyping of nanostructures, and productive direct writing on wafers. Due to its sequential nature throughput is limited, especially in case of dense structures.
AMO operates a Leica (Vistec) EBPG 5000 to create nanostructures with minimum feature sizes of only 5 nm. By constant work on

• new exposure strategies,
• evaluation of new resist materials,
• megasonic agitated development processes and
• supercritical resist drying steps

a process pool for high resolution and high contrast structures has been created.

AMO uses electron beam lithography for direct writing of NanoCMOS- and silicon photonic devices and nanoimprint template fabrication. We offer exposure services on various materials up to 6" wafer substrates.