Chapter 4 . Nanostructures Technology , Research , and Applications

The NanoStructures Laboratory (NSL) at MIT develops techniques for fabricating surface structures with feature sizes in the range from nanometers to micrometers and uses these structures in a variety of research projects. The NSL includes facilities for lithography (photo, interferometric, electron beam, and x-ray), etching (chemical, plasma and reactiveion), liftoff, electroplating, sputter deposition, and ebeam evaporation. Much of the equipment and nearly all the methods utilized at the NSL are developed in-house. This is because commercial processing equipment, designed for the semiconductor industry, generally cannot achieve the resolution needed for nanofabrication, is inordinately expensive, and lacks the required flexibility.