Chapter 5 . Nanostructures Technology , Research and Applications

The NanoStructures Laboratory (NSL) at MIT develops techniques for fabricating surface structures of integrated circuits (IC) with feature sizes in the range from nanometers to micrometers, and uses these structures in a variety of research projects. The NSL includes facilities for lithography (photo, interferometric, electron beam, ion beam, and x-ray), etching (chemical, plasma and reactive-ion), liftoff, electroplating, sputter deposition, and e-beam evaporation. Much of the equipment and nearly all of the methods utilized in the NSL are developed in-house. Generally, commercial IC processing equipment cannot achieve the resolution needed for nanofabrication, and it lacks the required flexibility. The research projects fall into four major categories: (1) development of submicron and nanometer fabrication technology; (2) short-channel semiconductor devices, quantumeffect electronics, and optoelectronics; (3) periodic structures for x-ray optics, spectroscopy, atomic interferometry and nanometer metrology; (4) crystalline films on nonlattice-matching substrates. 5.2 Scanning Electron Beam Lithography