arXiv · 1001.2217
Surface Percolation and Growth. An alternative scheme for breaking the diffraction limit in optical patterning
Abstract
A nanopatterning scheme is presented by which the structure height can be controlled in the tens of nanometers range and the lateral resolution is a factor at least three times better than the point spread function of the writing beam. The method relies on the initiation of the polymerization mediated by a very inefficient energy transfer from a fluorescent dye molecule after single photon absorption. The mechanism has the following distinctive steps: the dye adsorbs on the substrate surface with a higher concentration than in the bulk, upon illumination it triggers the polymerization, then isolated islands develop and merge into a uniform structure (percolation), which subsequently grows until the illumination is interrupted. This percolation mechanism has a threshold that introduces the needed nonlinearity for the fabrication of structures beyond the diffraction limit.
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D. Kunik, L. I. Pietrasanta, O. E. Martínez. 2010-01-13. Surface Percolation and Growth. An alternative scheme for breaking the diffraction limit in optical patterning. https://doi.org/10.4279/pip.010008
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