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International Workshop on Advanced Patterning Solutions (IWAPS)

Theoretical Review of a new approach of Lithography at nm Resolution

JianGuang Xian, FuWei Zhan

Published Oct 26, 2023• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This article theoretically reviews the new potential offered for photolithography by the combination of 2 elements: EIT (Electromagnetically Induced Transparency) and SMLM (Single Molecule Localization Microscopy), lithography with nm resolution is expected, with outstanding advantage. Light resonant with atomic transition frequency, when pass through with assistance of couple light, quantum coherent interference will cause previously opaque medium to induce sharp transparent windows in the frequency absorption region, while exhibiting slow light effects. Microscopy is lens system like photolithography, its limit is dictated by Airy disk, with value of 200nm, SMLM has brought inspiration, it breaks through limit and achieve nm resolution.

DOI
10.1109/iwaps60466.2023.10366152

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Physical Review A•Feb 19, 2013•21 citations
This article theoretically reviews the new potential offered for photolithography by the combination of 2 elements: EIT (Electromagnetically Induced Transparency) and SMLM (Single Molecule Localization Microscopy), lithography with nm resolution is expected, with outstanding advantage. Light resonant with atomic transition frequency, when pass through with assistance of couple light, quantum coherent interference will cause previously opaque medium to induce sharp transparent windows in the frequency absorption region, while exhibiting slow light effects. Microscopy is lens system like photolithography, its limit is dictated by Airy disk, with value of 200nm, SMLM has brought inspiration, it breaks through limit and achieve nm resolution.
The resolution of traditional optical microscope and optical lithography is limited by about half wavelength of the light source, which is well known as the diffraction limit or Abbe limit. The resolution limit is due to the missing of high spatial frequency components in the far-field. One way to achieve high resolution is to move the detector into the near-field region where the evanescent wave can be collected. However, these methods are surface-bound and usually very slow which have limited applications. It has long been an interesting and important question about how to overcome the diffraction limit in the far-field.\n\nFor optical lithography, a number of methods have been proposed to overcome the diffraction limit such as multi-photon scanning, quantum entanglement, quantum inspired process (e.g., dopperlon), and quantum dark state. However, these methods either require multi-photon absorber, quantum entanglement, or multi-energy levels, which restrict them from extending to higher resolution in practice. In this thesis, we showed that sub-diffraction-limited resolution can be generated by the coherent Rabi gradient. This method does not require multi-photon absorber or quantum entanglement but just quantum coherence of the medium. Extension from lower resolution to higher resolution is very straightforward where we just need to increase the pulse intensity or pulse duration. We also proposed two atom lithography experiments based on the Rabi gradient. The first one uses Rubidium Rydberg atom and microwave where we showed that sub-micrometer line spacing is possible. The second one uses Chromium atom and optical field where we showed that sub-10nm line spacing is possible while the wavelength of the light is about 400nm.\n\nFor optical imaging, a number of methods have also been proposed to achieve super-resolution such as multi-photon microscope, stimulated-emission-depletion, structured illumination microscopy, centroid-based techniques and metamaterial-based lens. Here, we will show a new method to achieve resolution beyond the diffraction limit which we called it resonance fluorescence microscopy. Resonance fluorescence has been proposed to localize a single atom with resolution beyond the diffraction limit. The separation between two atoms can also be extracted from the resonance\nfluorescence spectrum. To develop it as microscopy, we need to evaluate the resonance fluorescence spectrum of multiple-atom system. We analytically solved the general feature of the spectrum when the Rabi frequency is much larger than the dipole-dipole interaction and showed how to extract the spatial information of the atoms with resolution far beyond the diffraction limit. This method is entirely based on far-field techniques and it does not require point-by-point scanning.
Abstract Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) stems from a quantum system, where an opaque atomic medium appears the narrow transparent state within a wide absorption area. This phenomenon can be achieved by quantum interference of pumping light and detecting light at different energy levels of transitions. In the generation process of EIT effect, in addition to transparent state, the atomic medium is usually accompanied with a strong dispersion effect, which will bright about a significant reduction of light velocity, thus realizing many important applications, such as slow light propagations. Although the EIT effect has many important applications, its application scenarios are greatly limited due to the fact that EIT realization usually requires specific and complicated conditions, such as refrigeration temperature, high intensity laser, etc. Recently, the analogue of EIT effect in metamaterial has attracted increasing attentions due to its advantages such as controllable room temperature and large operating bandwidth. Metamaterial analogue of EIT effect has become a new research focus. In this article, we review current research progresses on EIT metamaterials. Firstly, we describe the theoretical models for analyzing EIT metamaterials, including the mechanical oscillator model and the equivalent circuit model. Then, we describe the simulations, designs and experiments of passive EIT metamaterials with fixed structures and active EIT metamaterials with tunable elements. Furthermore, the applications of EIT metamaterials in the areas of slow lights, sensings, absorptions and other fields are also reviewed. Finally, the possible directions and key issues of future EIT metamaterial researches are prospected.
Coherent preparation by laser light of quantum states of atoms and molecules can lead to quantum interference in the amplitudes of optical transitions. In this way the optical properties of a medium can be dramatically modified, leading to electromagnetically induced transparency and related effects, which have placed gas-phase systems at the center of recent advances in the development of media with radically new optical properties. This article reviews these advances and the new possibilities they offer for nonlinear optics and quantum information science. As a basis for the theory of electromagnetically induced transparency the authors consider the atomic dynamics and the optical response of the medium to a continuous-wave laser. They then discuss pulse propagation and the adiabatic evolution of field-coupled states and show how coherently prepared media can be used to improve frequency conversion in nonlinear optical mixing experiments. The extension of these concepts to very weak optical fields in the few-photon limit is then examined. The review concludes with a discussion of future prospects and potential new applications.
We present a coherent population trapping based scheme to attain sub-nanoscale resolution for atom localization, microscopy and lithography. Our method uses three-level atoms coupled to amplitude modulated probe field and spatially dependent drive field. The modulation of the probe field allows us to tap into the steep dispersion normally associated with electromagnetically induced transparency and offers an avenue to attain sub-nanometer resolution using just optical fields. We illustrate application of the techniques to the area of microscopy and lithography and show how multilevel schemes offer the possibility of improving resolution further.
The resolutions of the optical microscope and the optical lithography are both limited by the well-known Rayleigh limit. Rabi oscillation is a coherent nonlinear process that can modulate the population distribution between two energy states and also modulate the resonant fluorescence spectrum. If we have a gradient electric field amplitude in the space, the Rabi frequency for different position is also different. The spatial distribution of the population in the excited state can be modulated and the spatial information of the atoms can also be encoded in the resonant fluorescence spectrum. If the gradient of the field is large enough, the pattern generated can be subwavlength and the atoms with subwavelength distances can also be extracted. Here we present a review on both the subwavelength photolithography and microscopy via Rabi oscillations.
The concept of performing quantum lithography with classical, instead of entangled, light is of great interest for practical implementation. One recent proposal [Hemmer, Muthukrishnan, Scully, and Zubairy, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 163603 (2006)] to accomplish this was based on the use of frequency selective multiphoton transitions in a two-level atom. To analyze this possibility we investigate a four-level system theoretically and show that a high-resolution lithography is possible. We quantitatively identify conditions under which high-contrast lithography can be performed without sacrificing high resolution. The approach is a perturbative density matrix method. This model identifies the tradeoff between resolution and contrast as being due to higher-order terms from intermediate-level Rabi oscillations. We propose using positive and negative one-photon detunings to suppress this effect. Allowing higher Rabi frequencies means that shorter interaction time can be used, and this overcomes the degradation in contrast due to population decay. Finally, we generalize our scheme to $\mathbit{N}$-photon lithography.