Direct laser writing breaking diffraction barrier based on two-focus parallel peripheral-photoinhibition lithography

Abstract. Direct laser writing (DLW) enables arbitrary three-dimensional nanofabrication. However, the diffraction limit poses a major obstacle for realizing nanometer-scale features. Furthermore, it is challenging to improve the fabrication efficiency using the currently prevalent single-focal-spot systems, which cannot perform high-throughput lithography. To overcome these challenges, a parallel peripheral-photoinhibition lithography system with a sub-40-nm two-dimensional feature size and a sub-20-nm suspended line width was developed in our study, based on two-photon polymerization DLW. The lithography efficiency of the developed system is twice that of conventional systems for both uniform and complex structures. The proposed system facilitates the realization of portable DLW with a higher resolution and throughput.