IBM Research-Zurich, Rüschlikon, Switzerland.
Nanotechnology. 2012 Sep 28;23(38):385307. doi: 10.1088/0957-4484/23/38/385307. Epub 2012 Sep 5.
A novel stitching method is presented which does not require special purpose alignment markers and which is particularly adapted to probe lithographic methods, enabling the writing of large patterns exceeding the size limitations imposed by high precision scan stages. The technique exploits the natural roughness of polymeric resist surfaces as a fingerprint marker for the sample position. Theoretical and experimental evidence is provided that sub-nanometer metrological accuracy can be achieved by inspecting the surface roughness in areas with 1 μm linear dimensions. The method has been put to the test in a thermal probe lithography experiment by writing a composite pattern consisting of five 10 μm × 10 μm fields which are seamlessly joined together. The observed stitching error of 10 nm between fields is dominated by inaccuracies of the scanning hardware used in the experiment and is not fundamentally limited by the method per se.
提出了一种新的拼接方法，该方法不需要特殊用途的对准标记，特别适用于探针光刻方法，能够写出超过高精度扫描台所施加的尺寸限制的大图案。该技术利用聚合物抗蚀剂表面的自然粗糙度作为样品位置的指纹标记。提供了理论和实验证据，表明通过检查具有 1 μm 线性尺寸的区域中的表面粗糙度，可以实现亚纳米计量精度。该方法已在热探针光刻实验中进行了测试，通过书写由五个 10 μm×10 μm 场无缝连接组成的复合图案。观察到的场之间 10nm 的拼接误差主要是实验中使用的扫描硬件的不准确性造成的，而不是由该方法本身造成的。
