Combining conventional lithography with molecular self-assembly for chemical patterning

The combination of conventional lithography with molecular self-assembly for chemical patterning is discussed. Chemical patterning can incorporate self-assembled molecules as basic building blocks and active components to develop functional films for applications ranging from sensor platforms to hierarchical structures. The important aspect of this process is the resist, which is robust enough to allow subsequent chemical processing involving UV-ozone oxidation and self-assembly deposition while acting as shield to protect the components of the films from one another. This helps to exploit the parallel wafer-scale processing of conventional lithography to pattern chemical functionality. A major advantage of this technique is that the different components (SAM) of the film are shielded by the resist against displacement and intercalation. Additional benefits of this process are the ability to have multiple levels of alignment and reproducible one-to-one feature size transfer.