Demonstration of Nanomachining With Focused Extreme Ultraviolet Laser Beams

A major challenge in laser machining of microstructures is that of extending the spatial domain to the smaller dimensions of interest in nanotechnology. We demonstrate the feasibility of directly machining nanoscale structures with a focused extreme ultraviolet (EUV) laser beam. Clean sub-200-nm-wide trenches (130-nm full width at half maximum) were ablated on polymethyl methacrylate photoresist by focusing the 46.9-nm wavelength beam from a Ne-like Ar capillary discharge tabletop laser with a Fresnel zone plate lens. Considering that clean 82-nm holes were also ablated using the same laser, it can be expected that focused EUV laser light will enable the machining of significantly smaller features.