Atom lithography

Unlike photons and electrons, atoms in energetic metastable states have an internal state that is easily manipulated. This introduces the possibility of novel lithographic schemes based on optical quenching of the internal energy. As one of the next generation lithography schemes, neutral atom beam lithography based on atom optics may be realized through two approaches: (1) Direct atom deposition techniques by focusing laser standing waves, which can produce nanoscale features, large area parallel deposition and high resolution; (2) Metastable atom beam lithography combined with effective resists, which can also achieve minimum size features with a sharp edge resolution of 40 nm. It should be pointed out that the two methods are completely different in nature but produce very similar results.