Resist of the month: Versatile Phoenix 81 (AR-P 8100)

Phoenix 81 was developed as part of a Eurostar project in cooperation with Swisslitho AG (now Heidelberg Instruments Nano). Using a NanoFrazor and thermal scanning probe lithography (t-SPL), structures as small as 10 nm can be written by dipping a hot needle into the resist layer and evaporating the resist at the tip (see also AR NEWS, 42nd issue). Meanwhile, more than 40 NanoFrazor devices have been installed worldwide. Most users take advantage of the ultra-pure, stable Phoenix 81 (gold standard) for their structuring.

This resist allows for various potential applications. A few examples kindly provided by Dr. Felix Holzner and Samuel Bisig (Heidelberg Instruments Nano) are shown in the following.

Pillars written into Phoenix 81 by t-SPL and etched into 20nm Au using a hard mask stack and ion beam etching.

Side electrodes onto a nanowire made markerless overlay using t-SPL in Phoenix 81.

Room-temperature single electron transistors made by t-SPL (nanofeatures) and direct laser sublimation (microfeatures) of Phoenix 81 and etching into Si.

7nm gap made by t-SPL and a two layer lift-off with Phoenix 81 and PMMA-co-MA (AR-P 617).

This documented versatility motivated us to choose Phoenix 81 as resist of the month.

For further information, see our website and https://heidelberg-instruments.com/.