Organic Ice Resists

Electron-beam lithography (EBL) is the backbone technology for patterning nanostructures and manufacturing nanodevices. It involves processing and handling synthetic resins in several steps, each requiring optimization and dedicated instrumentation in cleanroom environments. Here, we show that simple organic molecules, e.g. alcohols, condensed to form thin-films at low temperature demonstrate resist-like capabilities for EBL applications and beyond.

The entire lithographic process takes place in a single instrument, and avoids exposing  users to chemicals and the need of cleanrooms. Unlike EBL that requires large samples with optically flat surfaces, we patterned on fragile membranes only 5 nm-thin, and 2 × 2 mm2 diamond samples. We created patterns on the nanometer to sub-millimeter scale, as well as three-dimensional structures by stacking layers of frozen organic molecules.

Finally, using plasma etching, the organic ice resist (OIR) patterns are used to structure the underlying material, and thus enable nanodevice fabrication.