Toward Practical, Subwavelength, Visible-Light Photolithography with Hyperlens

The future success of semiconductor technology relies on the continuing reduction of the feature size, allowing more components per chip and higher speed. Optical metamaterial-based hyperlens exhibit the ability for spatial pattern compression from the micro- to nanoscale, potentially addressing the ever-increasing demand of photolithograpy for inexpensive, all-optical nanoscale pattern recoding. Here, we demonstrate a photolithography system enabling a feature size of 80 nm using a 405 nm laser source. To realize such a system, we developed a fabrication method to obtain very thick hyperbolic metamaterial enabling a hyperlens with a very large demagnification rate of 3.75. Finally, we discuss several steps necessary to transform the proposed technique into a practical solution for the visible-light-based nanolithography. These include flattening of the inner surface of the hyperlens to increase the working area and integrating the proposed device into a conventional stepper system.