%0 Journal Article
%T Surface Percolation and Growth. An alternative scheme for breaking the diffraction limit in optical patterning
%A D. Kunik
%A L. I. Pietrasanta
%A O. E. Mart¨ªnez
%J Papers in Physics
%D 2009
%I Papers in Physics
%R 10.4279/pip.010008
%X A nanopatterning scheme is presented by which the structure height can be controlled in the tens of nanometers range and the lateral resolution is a factor at least three times better than the point spread function of the writing beam. The method relies on the initiation of the polymerization mediated by a very inefficient energy transfer from a fluorescent dye molecule after single photon absorption. The mechanism has the following distinctive steps: the dye adsorbs on the substrate surface with a higher concentration than in the bulk, upon illumination it triggers the polymerization, then isolated islands develop and merge into a uniform structure (percolation), which subsequently grows until the illumination is interrupted. This percolation mechanism has a threshold that introduces the needed nonlinearity for the fabrication of structures beyond the diffraction limit.
%K Lithography
%K Polymerization
%K Patterining
%U http://www.papersinphysics.org/index.php/papersinphysics/article/view/21/PDF21