Electron Beam Lithography

Electron beam lithography is an electrical engineering method for patterning extremely fine features onto a surface, typically a semiconductor wafer coated with an electron-sensitive resist, by scanning a tightly focused beam of electrons across it to selectively expose the resist in the desired pattern, which is then developed to leave or remove material according to the design. Because an electron beam can be focused far more tightly than visible or ultraviolet light, the technique can produce features only a few nanometers wide, finer than conventional optical lithography achieves, making it valuable for prototyping advanced integrated circuits, fabricating photomask patterns and research into nanoscale devices, though its serial, point-by-point writing process makes it far slower than optical lithography for high-volume production.