A method for uniform demagnification imaging beyond the diffraction limit: cascaded planar hyperlens

Metamaterial composed of multistacked metal and dielectric films provides the access to ray tracing in subwavelength regions and to form a variety of transformation optical devices for manipulating light beyond the diffraction limit, such as hyperlens and cloak. In this paper, this method is employed to design planar hyperlens for demagnification imaging lithography. Variant ray route configurations are considered and compared for the sake of imaging quality as well as device structure complexity. It is found that specifically designed trajectory route from the object plane to the image plane help to yield imaging devices with uniform demagnification ratio and improved image quality. Then multiple similar imaging devices could be cascaded for further demagnification and reduce of structure complexity from the viewpoint of application. The imaging results with about 1/23 wavelength (16 nm) half-pitch resolution in the measure of electric field intensity are demonstrated with numerical simulations. Also presented are the imaging characteristic analyses including light intensity, demagnification ratio and resolution.