Calibration of exposure dose for nanoscale plasmonic lithography with microsized far-field spot patterns

To improve the reliability of a plasmonic lithography system for nanoscale device fabrication, a rapid calibration process is essentially required. The calibration needs a time-consuming process using an atomic force microscope (AFM) to measure a number of nano-sized spot pattern widths recorded for the variation of the exposure dose. On the basis of the underlying mechanisms of a propagating field through a bowtie aperture, we conducted a theoretical study to derive a fitting equation to predict the widths of spot patterns in a near-field region compared with those in the far-field region. We obtained a calibration curve of the exposure dose to fit the width of spot pattern in the far-field region that is measureable using an optical microscope (OM). The validity of the rapid calibration process using an OM was verified by comparison between the calibration curves determined using AFM and OM, and the uncertainty between them was found to be 3.4%. The drift of the calibration curve was further explored to calculate the system stability of the plasmonic lithography technique, which was estimated to be >93%. Furthermore, we also demonstrated that the calibration curve is effective in the prediction of the exposure dose for nanoscale line patterning.