Parallel nanolithography in carbon layers with conductive imprint stamps

Nanometer-scale lithography in amorphous carbon layers was carried out by l ocally oxidizing the carbon under the tip of a scanning probe microscope. A lthough this patterning technique is able to yield very small structures, i ts speed is severely limited due to the serial character of the writing pro cess. We exploit the potential of local carbon oxidation to give a parallel lithography approach which uses prepatterned stamps for electron-induced p arallel structuring of the carbon film. This technique allows the transfer of complex, three-dimensional patterns into a carbon resist layer within a single process step. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(00 )02206-3].