Abstract

Optical lithography is the key technology for the production of semiconductor devices, but a fundamental limit to the spatial resolution of this technique arises due to diffraction. More precisely the Rayleigh criterion states that classical uncorrelated light allows one to create structures with feature sizes down to about half the optical wavelength. Recently several schemes in the literature demonstrated that the diffraction limit can be circumvented in interferometric lithography. This result is not only interesting from a fundamental point of view, but also relevant for the semiconductor industry that strives for a miniaturization of their devices. However, all of these schemes have in common that they are based on W-photon absorption processes, and therefore require high light field intensities which hampers an experimental realization.

© 2009 IEEE