High-efficiency focusing and imaging by dielectric kinoform zone plate lenses with soft X-rays.

With fast advances in enhancing the focusing/imaging resolution of Fresnel zone plate lenses toward sub-10 nm, low diffraction efficiency in connection with their rectangular zone shape still remains a big issue in both soft and hard X-ray microscopy. In hard X-ray optics, encouraging progress has recently been reported in our earlier attempts of high focusing efficiency by 3D kinoform shaped metallic zone plates, formed by greyscale electron beam lithography. This paper addresses our efforts towards high focusing/imaging efficiency by developing a novel dielectric kinoform zone plate lens for soft X-rays. The effects of the zone materials and zone shapes on the focusing/imaging quality were first theoretically investigated by a modified thin-grating-approximation method, revealing superior efficiencies of dielectric kinoform zone plates over rectangular ones in metals. Optical characterizations of replicated dielectric kinoform zone plates by greyscale electron beam lithography demonstrate a focusing efficiency of 15.5% with a resolution of 110 nm in the water window of X-rays. Apart from high efficiency, the novel kinoform zone plate lenses developed in this work exhibit significant advantages over conventional zone plates, i.e. simplified process, low cost and no need for a beamstop.

A compound Kinoform/Fresnel zone plate lens with 15 nm resolution and high efficiency in soft x-ray.

X-ray microscope as an important nanoprobing tool plays a prevailing role in nano-inspections of materials. Despite the fast advances of high resolution focusing/imaging reported, the efficiency of existing high-resolution zone plates is mostly around 5% in soft x-ray and rapidly goes down to 1%-2% when the resolution approaches 10 nm. It is well known that the rectangular zone shape, beamstop, limited height/width ratios, material absorption of light and structural defects are likely responsible for the limited efficiency. Although zone plates with Kinoform profile are supposed to be efficient, progress for achieving both high resolution (<30 nm) and high efficiency (>5%) have hardly been addressed in soft x-ray. In this work, we propose a compound Kinoform/Fresnel zone plate (CKZP) by combing a dielectric Kinoform zone plate with a 15 nm resolution zone plate. Greyscale electron beam lithography was applied to form the 3D Kinoform zone plate and atomic layer deposition was carried out to form the binary zone plate. Optical characterizations demonstrated 15 nm resolution focusing/imaging with over 7.8% efficiency in soft x-ray. The origin of the efficiency improvement behind the proposed compound lens is theoretically analyzed and discussed.

Trapezoid-kinoform zone plate lens - a solution for efficient focusing in hard X-ray optics.

X-ray microscopes are powerful tools in the nano-inspection of materials owing to their ultra-high resolution at the molecular level. However, the focusing efficiency of binary zone plate lenses as key components in such probes is merely 5% in practice, hindering their application in advanced scientific research. Although kinoform zone plate lenses are in principle supposed to possess high efficiency beyond binary ones, little progress has been reported so far due to the shortage of both a theoretical calculation approach and greyscale lithography for generating fine three-dimensional (3D) kinoform zones of the lenses. This paper reports our theoretical work for a modified beam propagation method to compute the focusing performance and state-of-the-art 3D greyscale electron beam lithography for kinoform zone plate lenses. Three different zone shapes - binary, kinoform and top-flat kinoform (nicknamed the trapezoid-kinoform) - were compared both theoretically and experimentally. Theoretical calculations suggest, for the first time, that the trapezoid-kinoform zone plate gives rise to the highest focusing efficiency among the three lenses, which was proved by optical characterization of the fabricated lens with hard X-rays. As high as 40% of the focusing efficiency by Au trapezoid-kinoform lenses with resolution of 250 nm at 8 keV has been achieved, which is two times higher than that of binary zone plate lenses. The origin of the enhanced efficiency in the trapezoid-kinoform zone plate lens was explained by the joint contributions from both the refraction through the kinoform slope and the diffraction through the top flat part of the trapezoid-kinoform zone plate. Such a breakthrough in focusing efficiency sheds light on the further development of X-ray lenses with both high resolution and high efficiency.

Theoretical modeling of ice lithography on amorphous solid water.

Due to the perfection of the nanofabrication in nanotechnology and nanoscience, ice lithography (IL) by patterning ice thin-films with a focused electron beam, as a significant derivative technology of electron beam lithography (EBL), is attracting growing attention, evoked by its advantages over traditional EBL with respects of in situ-fabrication, high efficiency, high accuracy, limited proximity effect, three-dimensional (3D) profiling capability, etc. However, theoretical modeling of ice lithography for replicated profiles on the ice resist (amorphous solid water, ASW) has rarely been reported so far. As the result, the development of ice lithography still stays at the experimental stage. The shortage of modeling methods limits our insight into the ice lithography capability, as well as theoretical anticipations for future developments of this emerging technique. In this work, an e-beam induced etching ice model based on the Monte Carlo algorithm for point/line spread functions is established to calculate the replicated profiles of the resist by ice lithography. To testify the fidelity of the modeling method, systematic simulations of the ice lithography property under the processing parameters of the resist thickness, electron accelerating voltage and actual patterns are performed. Theoretical comparisons between the IL on ASW and the conventional EBL on polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) show superior properties of IL over EBL in terms of the minimum feature size, the highest aspect ratio, 3D nanostructure/devices, etc. The success in developing a modeling method for ice lithography, as reported in this paper, offers a powerful tool in characterizing ice lithography up to the theoretical level and down to molecular scales.