Near-field scanning optical microscopy based nanostructuring of glass

Nanofabrication, at lateral resolutions beyond the capability of conventional optical lithography techniques, is demonstrated here. Femtosecond laser was used in conjunction with Near-field Scanning Optical Microscopes (NSOMs) to nanostructure thin metal films. Also, the possibility of using these nanostructured metal films as masks to effectively transfer the pattern to the underlying substrate by wet etching process is shown. Two different optical nearfiled processing schemes were studied for near-field nanostructuring. In the first scheme, local field enhancement in the near-field of a scanning probe microscope (SPM) probe tip irradiated with femtosecond laser pulses was utilized (apertureless NSOM mode) and as a second approach, femtosecond laser beam was spatially confined by cantilevered NSOM fiber tip (apertured NOSM mode). The minimized heat- and shock-affected areas introduced during ultrafast laser based machining process, allows processing of even high conductivity thin metal films with minimized formation of any interfacial compounds between the metal films and the underlying substrate. Potential applications of this method may be in the fields of nanolithography, nanofluidics, nanoscale chemical and gas sensors, high-density data storage, nano-opto-electronics, as well as biotechnology related applications.