TUTORIAL 1: Micro-nano fabrication techniques

Application of nanotechnology is very diverse, ranging from electronics, optics, photonics, communication, medicine, sensing, biotechnology and biomaterials, and to energy production. This emerging technology is capable of creating many new materials and devices in nanoscale with a vast range of above applications. It is well established that many materials with minimum dimensions on the nanoscale have properties different than those observed for their bulk material. The challenges in nanotechnology lie mainly in the fabrication methods. It is also predicted that a number of new simple technologies will evolve with further developments in nanotechnology. Nanofabrication is the process of making functional electronic, photonic or physico-chemical structures with desired patterns having minimum dimensions in nanoscale. This talk will present the recent developments in nanofabrication techniques. First part of the talk covers optical lithography techniques used in micro-nano fabrication. These top-down techniques include photolithography and scanning beam lithography viz. laser writing. In the second part of the talk electron beam and focused ion beam alithography techniques will be discussed. Unconventional nanofabrication methods which include both bottom-up and top-down approaches are briefly covered.