A brief introduction to e-beam lithography

As part of MIT's Independent Activities Period (IAP), Mark Mondol, Assistant Director for the Nano Structures Laboratory; and Research Scientist Juan Ferrera led a hybrid class on e-beam lithography. E-beam lithography enables advanced semiconductor chips; without e-beam lithography minimum features sizes would be limited to approximately 200 nm. In research environments e-beam lithography allows direct write, maskless lithography enabling quick and relatively cheap design changes. This talk introduces the basics of e-beam lithography and pattern transfer, including electron energy, material interaction, limits to resolution, e-beam resists, throughput, proximity effect correction and characteristics of different e-beam lithography tools.