Eulitha's enabling technology finds use in a variety of fields. Below are some examples of common uses. Our templates are also interesting for research in photonic crystals, metamaterials, nanotribology and biosensing among others.

Patterned Magnetic Media

In current hard disks, each bit is defined by magnetization of a small number of individual grains of a thin magnetic film. Reducing the grain size is the established way for increasing the data storage density of the recording medium. However, the grain size cannot be reduced indefinitely since the thermal energy becomes at a certain grain volume competitive with the magnetic anisotropy energy of the grains and thermal fluctuations can lead to the loss of the recorded data.

A promising solution to overcome this so-called super-paramagnetic limit is the use of patterned magnetic media, which consists of highly uniform arrays of nanoscale magnetic islands where each bit is stored in an individual island. The EUV-IL technique employed by EULITHA allows the fabrication of patterned magnetic media with island densities over 1 TBit/in [1,2]. Our high quality samples are ideal for testing pattern transfer processes and read/write procedures and allow you to be at the forefront of this fascinating research topic.

[1] H. Solak et al, J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 25, 2123 (2007).
[2] F. Luo et al, Appl. Phys. Lett. 92, 102505 (2007).

Nanoimprint Lithography

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is a fast and efficient technology for replicating nanoscale patterns of a stamp on a substrate. Because of its versatility and potential in terms of resolution and throughput NIL has been included on the roadmap to future chip fabrication (32 nm node and beyond). It is also considered as the prime candidate for mass production of patterned magnetic media. The quality of the resulting NIL patterns depends mainly on the quality of the used stamps. High-resolution stamps are mainly fabricated by e-beam lithography. However, e-beam has limited throughput and it suffers from stitching related uniformity problems among others.

NIL stamps fabricated by EULITHA posses a high degree of uniformity due to the holographic nature of our lithography technique. Our unique technology makes large area nanostructing affordable. EULITHA offers standard high-resolution NIL stamps and custom designs for thermal-NIL or UV-NIL.

INVITED poster at the MNE 2008 conference,Athens, Greece:
Fabrication of a stitching free 38 nm half-pitch NIL template with EUV interference lithography
H. H. Solak, M. Saidani, C. Spreu, K. Vogelsang, H. Schift, J. Gobrecht

Templated Self Assembly

Templated self-assembly is the combination of top-down lithography with bottom-up self-assembly. Recently, templated self-assembly is gaining interest in various fields of research. Templates which are fabricated with our EUV-IL technique are already used in various self-assembly approaches, like guided self-assembly of block copolymers [1] or the fabrication of three-dimensional SiGe quantum dot crystals [2]. Usually, several parameters have to be adjusted to study and to understand the particular self-assembly process. Hence, an adequate amount of identical templates is required. EULITHA provides you with highly uniform templates, which can be individually tailored to your self-assembly problem.

[1] M. Stoykovich et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 147802 (2006).
[2] D. Grützmacher et al, Nano Lett. 7(10), 3150 (2007).

Nanophotonics - sub-wavelength Optics

Optical components based on sub-wavelength periodic nano-structures (e.g. wire-grid polarizers, beam splitters, filters, etc) for the visible and UV regions offer new opportunities in optical system design and performance For instance, wire-grid polarizers manufactured with EUV-IL technology that exhibit high performance in the visible and UV regions were recently demonstrated [1]. Their compact and planar design makes them especially attractive for display technologies especially for the blue region. Further applications include improvement of emission efficiency for LED's and structured substrates for bio-sensing.

[1] Y. Ekinci et al, Opt. Express 14(6), 2323 (2006).

Nanowire circuits

A number of devices in future nanoelectronic applications may be based on arrays of metal nanowires, such as the crossbar latch devices proposed by HP labs [1]. This new concept is based on two stacked layers of parallel wires which are aligned perpendicular to each other. A layer of a bistable molecules is sandwiched between the wire layers and can be electronically switched from one state to another. Data storage and Boolean logic functions were already successfully tested in this straightforward device concept.

Our EUV-IL technique is ideally suited to produce large arrays of metal or semiconductor nanowires with the required periodicity and uniformity for research on these systems.

[1] P. Kuekes et al, J. of Appl. Phys. 97, 034301 (2005).

Calibration samples

EULITHA's nanostructure arrays find use in calibration of microscopes due to their high quality and uniformity. Eulitha offers a variety of solutions for calibration of SEM, SFM, STM, TEM microscopes.