Maskless nonlinear lithography with femtosecond laser pulses

Development of maskless lithography techniques can provide a potential solution for the photomask cost issue. Furthermore, it could open a market for small-scale manufacturing applications. Since femtosecond lasers have been found suitable for processing of a wide range of materials with sub-micrometer resolution – whereas the limit of achievable structure sizes is predicted to be below 100 nm – it is attractive to use this technique for maskless lithography. In this paper, we present the first results on super-resolution femtosecond laser lithography, which show great potential for future applications.