Ion beam lithography is the practice of scanning a focused beam of ions

Focused ion beam

Focused ion beam, also known as FIB, is a technique used particularly in the semiconductor industry, materials science and increasingly in the biological field for site-specific analysis, deposition, and ablation of materials. An FIB setup is a scientific instrument that resembles a scanning...

 in a patterned fashion across a surface in order to create very small structures such as integrated circuits

Integrated circuit

An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...

 or other nanostructures

Nanostructure

A nanostructure is an object of intermediate size between molecular and microscopic structures.In describing nanostructures it is necessary to differentiate between the number of dimensions on the nanoscale. Nanotextured surfaces have one dimension on the nanoscale, i.e., only the thickness of the...

.

Ion beam lithography has been found to be useful for transferring high-fidelity patterns on three-dimensional surfaces.

Ion beam lithography offers higher resolution patterning than UV, X-ray, or electron beam lithography because the ions have a smaller wavelength than the UV light, X-rays, and e-beam and undergo almost no diffraction or scattering. There is also a reduced potential radiation effect to sensitive underlying structures compared to x-ray and e-beam lithography.

See also

• E-beam lithography
• Maskless lithography
  Maskless lithography
  In maskless lithography, the radiation that is used to expose a photosensitive emulsion is not projected from, or transmitted through, a photomask. Instead, most commonly, the radiation is focused to a narrow beam. The beam is then used to directly write the image into the photoresist, one or more...
  
  
• Nanochannel glass materials
  Nanochannel glass materials
  Nanochannel glass materials are an experimental mask technology that is an alternate method for fabricating nanostructures, although optical lithography is the predominant patterning technique....
  
  
• Photolithography
  Photolithography
  Photolithography is a process used in microfabrication to selectively remove parts of a thin film or the bulk of a substrate. It uses light to transfer a geometric pattern from a photomask to a light-sensitive chemical "photoresist", or simply "resist," on the substrate...