I will report on the latest developments on nanofabrication using thermal Scanning Probe Lithography (tSPL). Next to briefly describing the newest achievements, in particular in parallel patterning using up to 10 cantilevers, the main focus of the presentation will be on the automation of the method. We use the nanometer-scale resolution of rapid AFM metrology to detect underlying devices, determine the local resist thickness, and perform nanometer-accurate overlay patterning. Together with laser patterning, the tool is used to autonomously fabricate fin-type field effect transistors with sub-50 nm dimensions at chip scale.
The achievement of fabricating complete devices solely relying on tSPL is the next important step to establish tSPL technology as a low-cost, low-damage, and high-resolution patterning method.

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Bio

Armin Knoll received a Master's degree in physics from the University of Wuerzburg, Germany (1998) and a Ph.D. from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, in 2004. After a postdoctoral fellowship with the University of Basel for 15 months (2003-2004) he joined the Advanced Media Concepts group of the Millipede project (2005-2006) at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory as a Visiting scientist. Armin Knoll joined IBM ZRL’s Science & Technology department in April 2006 as research staff member. Since 2010 he is leading the nanofabrication effort at IBM Research – Zurich and developed thermal Scanning Probe Lithography to technical market readiness. In 2012 he received an ERC Starting Grant from the European Commission for the control of objects in nanofluidic confinement.