Simo Wang

The radially polarized beams are modulated by phase-type optical needle modulators can be tightly focused to create needle-like focused beams, which are called optical needles. The use of optical needles with different resolutions and focal depths as direct writing heads for laser direct lithography enables periodic, cross-scale processing of high aspect ratio micro-nano structures with different line widths. The design of the phase-type optical needle modulators is the key to obtain optical needles with different resolutions and focal depths. However, the existing conventional methods for designing phase-type optical needle modulators rely on the physical model for generating optical needles and the defined fitness function, which makes their design time long and not adaptive. Based on the deep learning, a novel phase-type optical needle modulator design (PONMD) approach is proposed in this paper. The results show that the PONMD method takes 0.5526ms to design a phase-type optical needle modulator, and the similarity between the designed and target values is 96.73%. Compared with the conventional methods, the time consumption is reduced by about 8 orders of magnitude, and the similarity is improved by 11.19%. The PONMD approach has the advantages of adaptability, more efficient, less time-consuming, and less computational resource-consuming.

In this paper, the incident beam called high-dimensional circular hollow sinh-Gaussian (HD-CHsG) beam with a novel wavefront is proposed, which is determined by three parameters ( m , σ ₀ , σ ₁ ). Based on the Richards-wolf vector diffraction theory, it can be focused into a longitudinal polarized optical needle through a high numerical aperture lens. The effects of the three parameters ( m , σ ₀ , σ ₁ ) on the resolution and depth of focus of the longitudinally polarized optical needle are simulated and analyzed. In the condition of ( m , σ ₀ , σ ₁ ) = (8, 0.6, 0.125), a super-diffraction longitudinal optical needle with ultra-long focal depth (resolution 0.40 λ , focal depth 18.36 λ , depth-to-width ratio 45.9:1) is generated. In addition, compared with a radially polarized incident beam whose amplitude distribution is Gaussian and circular hollow sinh-Gaussian (CHsG) distribution, the resolution and depth of focus of the longitudinally polarized optical needle obtained by focusing the HD-CHsG beam are higher. Both simulations and experiments are carried out to demonstrate the availability of our method. Our findings are of great significance to the production, manipulation, and application of longitudinally polarized optical needle.

Defocus detection technology is the key technology in the fields of laser direct writing, optical disc storage, and high-precision lithography, which directly affects the accuracy of line drawing. In this paper, using the principle of astigmatic method, combined with differential technology, a nano-level defocus detection method based on differential astigmatism for the high numerical aperture systems is proposed. Firstly, by establishing a mathematical model, the theoretical analysis and simulation of the defocus detection method based on differential astigmatism are carried out. In addition, the system parameters at the maximum sensitivity of the high numerical aperture defocus detection system is also solved. Secondly, the defocus detection experimental system based on astigmatic method was built for experimental demonstration. Finally, using the objective lens with a numerical aperture of 0.8, the focus error signal curve with a good linear relationship is obtained in this paper. The linear range is 6μm; the system sensitivity can reach 5 nm; the system detection accuracy is 30 nm, and the repeat positioning accuracy can reach 30 nm. The defocus detection method based on the high numerical aperture objective lens has the advantages of large detection range, high detection accuracy and compact system structure, which can be widely used in various new high-precision laser processing fields.

This paper analyzes the effect of polarization and the incident angle on the contrasts of interference patterns in three-beam interference lithography. A non-coplanar laser interference system was set up to simulate the relationship between contrast, beam polarization, and the incident angle. Different pattern periods require different incident angles, which means different contrast losses in interference lithography. Two different polarization modes were presented to study the effects of polarization with different incident angles based on theoretical analysis simulations. In the case of the co-directional component TE polarization mode, it was demonstrated that the pattern contrast decreases with the increase in the incident angle and the contrast loss caused by the polarization angle error also grew rapidly. By changing the mode to azimuthal (TE-TE-TE) polarization, the contrast of the interference pattern can be ensured to remain above 0.97 even though the incident angle is large. In addition, TE-TE-TE mode can accept larger polarization angle errors. This conclusion provides a theoretical basis for the generation of high-contrast light fields at different incident angles, and the conclusion is also applicable to multi-beam interference lithography.

The movable super-diffraction optical needle (MSON) is a tightly focused beam like a “needle”, which can realize vector scanning on the focusing plane. Not only does it have a long focal depth, but its resolution also exceeds the diffraction limit. The modulation and control technology required for generating MSON by oblique incidence is explored in this manuscript for the purpose of processing high-aspect-ratio, sub-wavelength structures. As the optical needle generated by traditional methods is static and sensitive to variation of the angle information of the incident beam, here we introduce a confocal scanning system by using a two-dimensional galvanometer system, a scan lens, and a tube lens to control the oblique incidence angle. The effects of the oblique incidence angle on the resolution, depth of focus, uniformity, and side lobes of the MSON were analyzed. Further, the voltage-controlled liquid crystal located between the scan lens and the 2D galvanometer system can be used to compensate for the additional phase difference caused by oblique incidence. The aspect ratio is defined as the ratio of depth of focus to resolution. By modulating and controlling the light field, the MSON with high aspect ratio (7.36), sub-diffractive beam size (0.42λ), and long depth of focus (3.09λ) has been obtained with homogeneous intensity, and suppressed side lobes. High speed, high axial positioning tolerance, and high-resolution laser processing can also be achieved, which removes the restrictions presented by traditional laser processing technology, for which high resolution and long depth of focus cannot be achieved simultaneously.

The phase retrieval method based on random phase modulation can wipe out any ambiguity and stagnation problem in reconstruction. However, the two existing reconstruction algorithms for the random phase modulation method are suffering from problems. The serial algorithm from the spread-spectrum phase retrieval method can realize rapid convergence but has poor noise immunity. Although there is a parallel framework that can suppress noise, the convergence speed is slow. Here, we propose a random phase modulation phase retrieval method based on a serial–parallel cascaded reconstruction framework to simultaneously achieve quality imaging and rapid convergence. The proposed serial–parallel cascaded method uses the phased result from the serial algorithm to serve as the initialization of the subsequent parallel process. Simulations and experiments demonstrate that the superiorities of both serial and parallel algorithms are fetched by the proposed serial–parallel cascaded method. In the end, we analyze the effect of iteration numbers from the serial process on the reconstruction performance to find the optimal allocation scope of iteration numbers.