Stimulated Emission Depletion Inspired Sub-100 nm Structuring of Epoxides Using 2-Chlorothioxanthone as Photosensitizer.

Until very recently, the enhancement of multiphoton-based optical lithography by stimulated emission depletion (STED) inspired techniques was limited mostly to (meth)acrylates. Epoxides, which play an important role in semiconductor clean-room technology, were basically excluded from capitalizing on STED-inspired lithography, and if they were successfully used in STED-inspired lithography, the achievable structure sizes remained at 125 nm and above. We now found that using 2-chlorothioxanthone (CTX) as a sensitizer for a sulfonium salt acting as the photoinitiator allows for shrinking the structure size down to 83 nm.

STED-Inspired Cationic Photoinhibition Lithography.

Direct laser writing by two-photon lithography has been enhanced substantially during the past two decades by techniques borrowed from stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy. However, STED-inspired lithography was so far limited to radical polymerizations, mostly to acrylates and methacrylates. Cationic polymers did not derive benefits from this technique.