All-Water Etching-Free Electron Beam Lithography for On-Chip Nanomaterials

Electron beam lithography uses an accelerated electron beam to fabricate patterning on an electron-beam-sensitive resist but requires complex dry etching or lift-off processes to transfer the pattern to the substrate or film on the substrate. In this study, etching-free electron beam lithography is developed to directly write a pattern of various materials in all-water processes, achieving the desired semiconductor nanopatterns on a silicon wafer. Introduced sugars are copolymerized with metal ions-coordinated polyethylenimine under the action of electron beams. The all-water process and thermal treatment result in nanomaterials with satisfactory electronic properties, indicating that diverse on-chip semiconductors (e.g., metal oxides, sulfides, and nitrides) can be directly printed on-chip by an aqueous solution system. As a demonstration, zinc oxide patterns can be achieved with a line width of 18 nm and a mobility of 3.94 cm² V^-1 s^-1. This etching-free electron beam lithography strategy provides an efficient alternative for micro/nanofabrication and chip manufacturing.