Shadow Edge Lithography and Application to Nanofluidics

Many upcoming applications, such as nanoelectronic circuitry, single-molecule based chips, nanofluidics, chemical sensors, and fuel cells, require large arrays of nanochannels and nanowires. To commercialize such nanostructured devices, a high resolution and high throughput patterning method is essential. For this purpose, we developed the shadow edge lithography (SEL) as a wafer-scale, high-throughput nanomanufacturing method [1]. In the proposed method, the shadow effect in the high-vacuum evaporation was theoretically analyzed to predict the geometric distribution of the nanoscale patterns [2]. In experiment, nanoscale patterns were created by the shadow of aluminum (Al) edges that were prepatterned using a conventional microfabrication method.