Fabrication Of Infrared Antennas Using Electron Beam Lithography

The methods of fabricating infrared antennas using electron beam lithography will be investigated. For this purpose, a process using a bi-layer lift off process and a single layer of resist has been developed. The bi-layer lift off process used allowed for antenna arm resolution of 200nm. The single layer resist process enhanced the resolution of the antenna arms to 90nm by using a Chlorine based reactive ion etcher with Chrome as an etch mask. An alignment scheme using a set of global and local marks allowed for an overlay accuracy of 25nm. An improved process was developed to further improve device yield and uniformity of the infrared detectors by sputtering the bolometer and using an oxygen descum to remove residual resist between the antenna and bolometer. Two separate methods of fabrication of air-bridge microstrip antenna-coupled microbolometers using both a critical point dryer and an isotropic reactive ion etcher will also be introduced