Saliha Ouendi won first prize in the “Raith Micrograph Award 2024” competition on behalf of the Lithography Group. This award recognizes the most striking SEM images of lithographic structures fabricated using equipment from the German company Raith, in this case, an EBPG5000Plus electron-beam lithography system.

Traditional optical systems require multiple thick lenses to correct chromatic aberration, which increases the size, weight, and complexity of devices such as cameras, microscopes, and telescopes. Achromatic metalenses make it possible to replace these complex stacks with a single thin layer, paving the way for more compact and lightweight optical systems.

For a metalens to be achromatic, it is essential that each meta-atom, the fundamental building block, exhibits a specific variation in its optical response across the entire bandwidth

The fabricated metalens, with a diameter of 6,4 mm, is designed to focus light in the mid-infrared range at a distance of 5 mm. It is composed of more than 50 types of meta-atoms, each defined with a precise geometry of 3 microns, in order to optimize the lens’s achromatic behavior.

The award-winning SEM image shows meta-atoms etched into silicon to a depth of 3.5 microns, an operation carried out by Marc Faucher (IEMN), using plasma processes developed for NEMS structuring. The design of the metalens was created by Adelin Patoux (CRHEA). The lithography steps, involving the use of HSQ resist, were handled by the Lithography Group.

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https://raith.com/company/micrograph-award/winner-applications/

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lithoiemn.fr