Optical superlens imaging system for near field nanolithography

It has been proposed that a planar silver layer could be used to project a super-resolution image in the near field when illuminated near its plasma frequency. The planar silver layer is called as a superlens. In this paper, we design a superlens structure for nanolithography purpose. The imaging comparisons of single and layered silver/dielectric stacks are made. The design details of the superlens structure are presented. An experiment for demonstrating the focusing effect of the silver layer is performed which shows the superlens supports the imaging of a grating with 1 μm pitch at an exposure source with 365 nm wavelength.