Four beams evanescent waves interference lithography for patterning of two dimensional features

This work presents a theoretical study of using the interference of multiple counter-propagating evanescent waves as a lithography technique to print periodic two dimensional features. The formulation of the three dimensional Cartesian space expression of an evanescent wave is presented. In this work, the evanescent wave is generated by the total internal reflection of a plane wave at the interface between a incident dielectric material and a weakly absorbing transmission medium. The influences of polarization, incident angle and the phase shifting of the incident plane waves on the evanescent wave interference are studied. Numerical simulation results suggest that this technique enables fabrication of periodic two dimensional features with resolution less than one third the wavelength of the irradiation source.