Scanning and Splicing Atom Lithography for Self-traceable Nanograting Fabrication

Abstract

Atom lithography is a unique method to fabricate self-traceable pitch standards and angle standards, but extending its structure area to millimeter-level for application is challenging. In this paper, on the one hand, we put forward a new approach to fabricate a full-covered self-traceable Cr nanograting by inserting and scanning a Dove prism in the Gaussian beam direction of atom lithography. On the other hand, we extend the structure area along the standing-wave direction by splicing two-step atom deposition. Both nanostructures manufactured via scanning atom lithography and splicing atom lithography demonstrate good pitch accuracy, parallelism, continuity, and homogeneity, which opens a new way to fabricate centimeter-level full-covered self-traceable nanograting and lays the basis for the application of square ruler and optical encoders at the nanoscale.