Tip- And Laser-Based Nanofabrication Up To 100 Mm With Sub-Nanometre Precision

Although the field of optical lithography is highly investigated and numerous improvements are made, structure sizes smaller than 20 nm can only be achieved by considerable effort when using conventional technology. To cover the upcoming tasks in future lithography, enormous exertion is put into the development of alternative fabrication technologies in particular for micro- and nanotechnologies that are capable of measuring and patterning at the atomic scale in growing operating areas of several hundred square millimetres. Many new technologies resulted in this process, and are promising to overcome the current limitations(1,2), but most of them are demonstrated in small areas of several square micrometers only, using state-of-the-art piezo stages or the like. At the Technische Universitat Ilmenau, the NanoFabrication Machine 100 (NFM-100) was developed, which serves as an important experimental platform for basic research in the field of scale-spanning AFM tip-based and laser-based nanomeasuring and nanofabrication for simultaneous subnanometre measuring and structuring on surfaces up to similar to 100 mm. This machine can be equipped with several probing systems like AFM, laser focus probes and 3D-micro probes as well as tools for different nanofabrication technologies like tip-based technologies, optical technologies and mechanical two-dimensional technologies in a large working range with subnanometre reproducibility and uncertainty. In this paper, the specifics and advantages of the NFM-100 will be described as well as nanofabrication technologies that are currently worked on e.g. advanced scanning proximal probe lithography based on Fowler-Nordheim-electron-field emission, direct laser writing and UV-nanoimprint lithography.