Computational lithography for nanostructure science and technology

There are two paths to nanostructure patterning. Self-assembly is intriguing, as it makes use of the natural tendency of materials to spontaneously coalesce into shapes of technological importance without relying on complex, expensive tools to do the job. But the number of achievable shapes and workable materials is limited, placing severe restrictions on the types of nanostructures that can be achieved. More-or-less conventional deep ultraviolet (DUV) optical printing techniques have performed astonishingly well for features sizes below 90 nm. Electron beam technology has printed arbitrary patterns with minimum feature sizes on the order of 10´s of nanometers. These techniques do not suffer from the same restrictions on form and materials as self- assembly. There are restrictions, though. We address one of these here: the degree to which patterns can be faithfully reproduced as feature sizes scale to smaller dimensions.