Micro/nano-heater integrated cantilevers for micro/nano-lithography applications

This paper describes an array of micro/nano-heater-integrated cantilevers for micro- and nano-lithography applications. In the scanning thermal cantilever, as the electrical current flows through the cantilever with a conductive tip, electrical power is dissipated mainly within the tip area, and this dissipation raises the local temperature around the tip area. When the thermal power is applied to a thin photoresist film, spin-coated on silicon wafers or mask substrates, more than 90% of solvents involved in the photoresist starts to evaporate from the layer. Hence, the exposed areas can resist commercial developers during the development process. Patterning speed has been improved by employing an array of heaters with various sizes. The novel concept of the SPM-based nano-lithography has been successfully demonstrated by application on the fabricated cantilevers and a commercial SPM system.