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Frontiers in Optics

Beyond the Rayleigh Limit in Optical Lithography

Muhammad Suhail Zubairy

Published Jan 1, 2011• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

It is well known that the classical schemes for microscopy and lithography are restricted by the diffraction limit. The precision with which a pattern could be etched in interference lithography is limited by the wavelength of the light. In recent years, a number of schemes have been proposed via quantum interferometry to improve the resolution. Some of these schemes are based on quantum entanglement and multiphoton processes.

DOI
10.1364/fio.2011.ftum1

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It is well known that the classical schemes for microscopy and lithography are restricted by the diffraction limit. The precision with which a pattern could be etched in interference lithography is limited by the wavelength of the light. In recent years, a number of schemes have been proposed via quantum interferometry to improve the resolution. Some of these schemes are based on quantum entanglement and multiphoton processes.
The advantages of using nonclassical states of light for optical imaging are discussed, with special emphasis on the new field of quantum optical lithography. The classical resolution limit given by the Rayleigh criterion is approximately half of the optical wavelength. However, it has been argued that, by using special quantum states of light and a multiphoton-sensitive material or detector, this limit can be broken. Here, a brief and rigorous overview of this problem is provided, some particularly widespread misconceptions are addressed, and turning quantum lithography into a practical technology is discussed.
We have learnt in Chapter 5 how to reduce fluctuations of an electromagnetic (EM) field below the quantum (Heisenberg) limit imposed by the quantum nature of light. It has been shown that the quantum limit can be beaten using non-classical squeezed light of reduced fluctuations. Another issue of significant interest in quantum optics is to beat the diffraction limit imposed on the resolution of measured objects by the wave nature of light. In this chapter, we will illustrate how one can beat the diffraction limit by using the quantumnature of entangled light beams.We shall see that entangled light can lead us to a new domain of quantum optics in which detectors can resolve two closely spaced objects or spectral lines with the minimal resolvable limit significantly reduced or even completely suppressed. This subject is generally known as quantum optical lithography and could be described in short as the ability to print patterns onto certain materials using non-classical light. The developments in this area are of fundamental interest, and they hold promise for advances in optical interferometry and in applications such as quantummetrology and gravitational wave studies.
The resolution of optical interference is ultimately limited by the wavelength of light, which is known as Rayleigh criterion. Interestingly, this limitation could be surpassed by considering photonic de Broglie wave, and the resulting subwavelength interference is useful for lithography and super-resolving phase measurementsuper-resolving phase measurement. Usually, quantum entangled state is necessary to realize photonic de Broglie wave. Recent advances show that subwavelength interference could also be realized with a classical light through post-selected operation or by considering light-matter interaction. In this work, a new classical source is designed to achieve subwavelength interference without any post-selected operation in a linear scheme.
Summary form only given. Recently, Boto et al. (see Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 85, p. 2773, 2000) showed that using N entangled photons and an N-photon responsive lithographic recording medium, one could potentially write lithographic gratings with a resolution that is N times better than the classical Rayleigh criterion. An anticipated experimental difficulty is that such beams are weak, yet strong fields are needed to excite the N-photon absorption process. For the case of N=2, which was described in detail by Boto et al., we propose a method to overcome this problem. We also propose to use this idea "in reverse" to perform microscopy with better resolution than aloowed by the Rayleigh limit.