NANOLITHOGRAPHY USING A LASER FOCUSED NEUTRAL ATOM BEAM

Drawing on techniques developed for laser cooling and trapping of neut ral atoms, we demonstrate a novel lithographic tool where near-resonan t laser light is used to directly central the position of neutral atom s during deposition. The power of this technique is demonstrated by fo cusing sodium atoms into narrow lines as they traverse a one-dimension al standing wave. We have studied the dependence of the linewidth and contrast on the light field parameters, such as detuning, intensity, a nd interaction length. The dependencies follow the predictions from a simple model and, under optimal conditions, we obtain high contrast li nes with a resolution of 45 nm over an area of 0.2 X 6 mm(2). Numerica l simulations indicate that further improvement below 10 nm is likely in the near future. (C) 1995 American Vacuum Society.