High‐Resolution Scanning Near‐Field Optical Lithography of Conjugated Polymers

The fabrication of high‐resolution nanostructures in both poly(p‐phenylene vinylene), PPV, and a crosslinkable derivative of poly(9,9′‐dioctylfluorene), F8, using scanning near‐field optical lithography, is reported. The ability to draw complex, reproducible structures with 65000 pixels and lateral resolution below 60 nm (< λ/5) is demonstrated over areas up to 20 μm × 20 μm. Patterning on length‐scales of this order is desirable for realizing applications both in organic nanoelectronics and nanophotonics. The technique is based on the site‐selective insolubilization of a precursor polymer under exposure to the confined optical field present at the tip of an apertured near‐field optical fiber probe. In the case of PPV, a leaving‐group reaction is utilized to achieve insolubilization, whereas the polyfluorene is insolubilized using a photoacid initiator to create a crosslinked network in situ. For PPV, resolubilization of the features is observed at high exposure energies. This is not seen for the crosslinked F8 derivative, r‐F8Ox, allowing us to pattern structures up to 200 nm in height.