Directed self-assembly

Abstract

The advent of microelectronics has been at the heart of technological development over the past four decades, and advances in lithography have been at the heart of the development of microelectronics. Indeed, the submicron length scales of the features in today’s integrated circuits (ICs) make the term “microelectronics” something of a misnomer. Continuing the decrease in feature size, or the increase in circuit element density, requires overcoming the inherent physical challenges of current optical lithographic systems, while at the same time developing next-generation lithographic techniques to be used when the limits of optical lithography become comparatively cost prohibitive.1 In the case of magnetic storage devices, the demand for increasing storage density has led to a need to reduce feature size that exceeds even that of ICs.2-4.