Surface Plasmon Interference Lithography Assisted by a Fabry–Perot Cavity Composed of Subwavelength Metal Grating and Thin Metal Film

A surface plasmon interference lithography assisted by a Fabry–Perot (F-P) cavity composed of subwavelength metal gratings and a thin metal film is proposed to fabricate high-quality nanopatterns. The calculated results indicate that uniform straight interference fringes with high contrast and high electric-field intensity are formed in the resist under the F-P cavity. The analyses of spatial frequency spectra illuminate the physical mechanism of the formation for the interference fringes. The influence of the F-P cavity spacing is discussed in detail. Moreover, the error analyses reveal that all parameters except the metal grating period in this scheme can bear large tolerances for the device fabrication.