NANO-REGION & MiDALIx

In the Proof-of-concept activities for “MiDALIx” company, the NANO-REGION project partners (financed by the Program Interreg V-A Italy-Slovenia 2014-2020) worked with one of their own. Namely, MiDALIx is a high-tech company which developed DaLI - a device for maskless photolithography. The device is used in micro-structuring materials, because it enables highly precise structure edges, fine resolution and small feature sizes. With laser lithography it is possible to transfer the chosen design in a non-destructive way to the chosen material, like very thin silicon slices.

In research these thin slices are used in material science, quantum devices, microelectronics, and similar. In research of organic semiconductors or 2D nanostructures, Dali is able to accurately fabricate metal electrodes on nanostructures.

Within the NANO-REGION project, the consultations were given regarding the above-named thin slices, with the photoresist material, were illuminated with a pyramid, the horizontal and vertical lines pattern with different number of steps. There is a difference in performance of the slice, based on width, depth and number of stiches.

The consultation included sample analysis with a Focused Ion Beam Scanning Electron Microscope and  cross-section analysis: where shape, width, and depth of the stitches were determined. It turns out that samples with more steps have longer and shallower stitch and samples with fewer steps have deeper and narrower stitch. It turns out that the optimal patterns are those with shallower and narrower field contacts. At the end of the consultation, we identified with the company the focus for further development.