HIGH THROUGHPUT NANOSCALE IMAGING


Henry Smith and Rajesh Menon
Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Research Laboratories of Electronics

Visual inspection of nanoscale structures is increasingly important for applications ranging from imaging of biological specimens to inspection and metrology, for advanced semiconductor electronics. However, current tools are limited, either by their effective resolution, the damage they cause, or limited throughput. This project is developing a novel absorbance-modulation technique that combines photochemistry and optics to focus light to nanoscale dimensions, an improvement over traditional optical imaging by a factor of 10 or more. The technique is designed to utilize simple, low-cost processes to enable high-throughput nanoscopy for faster, more flexible analysis of nanostructures.