Flying plasmonic lens at near field for high speed nano-lithography

One of the grand challenges in the commercialization of nanotechnology is the development of high-throughput, cost-effective nanofabrication tools that allow frequent and easy design changes. The commonly used maskless nanolithography methods, such as electron-beam lithography, focused ion-beam lithography and scanning-probe lithography, offer the desired flexibility but with rather limited throughput, mainly due to their slow scanning nature. Here we capitalize on the dramatic advancements in nanoscale science and engineering and demonstrate a new high-throughput maskless nanolithography using flying plasmonic lens with potential high-throughput. We experimentally demonstrated the capability of patterning with 50 nm linewidth with a high flying speed at 10 meter/second. This low-cost nano-fabrication scheme has the potential of a few orders of magnitude higher throughput than current maskless techniques, and promises a new route towards the next generation nano-manufacturing.