Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mphil-in-micro-and-nanotechnology-enterprise-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/paper-1/4/iii/solution

For a spatially coherent, on-axis source, the coherent spatial-frequency cutoff is
A line-space grating must place at least its first diffracted orders within the pupil. Its limiting pitch is therefore , and its equal line/space half-pitch is
The corresponding full pitch is 143 nm. Explicitly distinguishing pitch from half-pitch avoids a factor-of-two ambiguity in the phrase “feature size.” This is an ideal optical cutoff estimate; finite resist contrast and process requirements can make the usable feature size larger.

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