Femtosecond laser lithography technique for submicron T-gate fabrication on positive photoresist

Femtosecond lasers have been found suitable for maskless photolithography with submicron resolution, which is very attractive for solving the problem of high photomask cost. Direct femtosecond laser writing of lithographic patterns is reported with submicron feature width on thin positive photoresist film. We use a scanning electron microscope to investigate the feature sizes of femtosecond laser lithography, which are determined by the incident laser power, the number of scan times and the substrate materials. Submicron T-shaped gates have been fabricated using a two-step process of femtosecond laser lithography where the gate foot and head can be separately defined on positive AZ4620 photoresist film. This work has led to the stable fabrication of sub-300 nm T-gates on the samples of GaN on sapphire substrate and AlGaN/GaN on Si substrate. (C) 2012 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). [DOI: 10.1117/1.OE.51.5.054303]