An AIP journal recently published a paper written by Graduate Research Assistant Cecilia Fasano, who studies microfabrication and its applications in astronomy.
The article “Constant Period Line Gratings as a Metric for Patterning Fidelity in Electron Beam Lithography” was published October 8, 2024, in the Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B. This article was selected by the editors to be promoted as an "Editor's Pick," since they felt the article is noteworthy and well-written.
Fasano is the lead author on the paper; Postdoctoral Research Scholar Fernando Cruz Aguirre, Graduate Fellow Jared Termini, and Associate Professor Casey DeRoo are co-authors.
The paper highlights a method for characterizing placement of sub-micron features over large areas. Current metrology standards in semiconductor and optical device fabrication can be tedious to implement over many square millimeters or centimeters. The authors use techniques typical in microfabrication, such as scanning electron microscopy and optical microscopy, in combination with interferometric metrology to efficiently characterize feature placement accuracy of periodic structures over large area substrates. They demonstrate this method on ten different diffraction gratings fabricated at Iowa's Material's Analysis, Testing, and Fabrication (MATFab) Facility. This work was supported by MATFab staff member Schaffer Finney, CMRF staff member Tom Moninger, and funding from NASA FINESST (No. 80NSSC21K1837) and NASA APRAs (Nos. 80NSSC22K0159 and 80NSSC22K0210).
The article can be found at the following DOI: https://doi.org/10.1116/6.0003958