Plasmonic Materials for Scalable Nano-Manufacturing

As the key part of an engine for innovation and knowledge production, nanomanufacturing provides a new foundation for economic growth. However, as the minimum feature size decreases, the cost of tools and processes required for nanomanufacturing has grown dramatically, yet the flexibility and reliability of those tools has decreased. In this seminar, I will present our current research at UC Berkeley focused on plasmonic materials, which are essential for the research and development of nanomanufacturing tools. Combining plasmonics with the flying head technique, inspired by the magnetic recording head in the hard disk drive, a new high-throughput maskless nanolithography using arrays of plasmonic lenses flying above a rotating substrate will also be presented. It can efficiently confine surface plasmon waves into a nano-spot within the optical nearfield of the lens with the scanning speed of 10 m/s. Such a scheme has the potential to achieve a few orders of magnitude higher nanolithography throughput than current maskless techniques, and it promises a new route towards the next generation of nanomanufacturing.