Rapid nanopatterning of zirconium dioxidevia nanoprinting and microwave-assisted annealing

Abstract

High resolution nanopatterning of metal oxide materials using low cost and high throughput processes is necessary for the ongoing development of electronic and optical devices. In this work, we demonstrate the fabrication of a sub-50 nm ZrO₂ nanomesh structure by size reduction induced volume shrinkage that accompanies microwave-assisted annealing. The effect of microwave annealing time on pattern dimension variations such as hole size, wall thickness, and pattern depth is investigated. The evolution of the crystallinity as well as the optical properties of the ZrO₂ thin films, including the refractive index and transmittance, are studied as a function of annealing time. Interestingly, the pure tetragonal crystalline phase of ZrO₂ can be obtained within minutes by rapid microwave-assisted annealing. We believe that the nanopatterning of inorganic oxide materials using the size reduction effect and rapid crystallization capability of microwave annealing is very useful in the field of nanoscale patterning and for applications involving nanoscale oxide materials.