Excimer laser irradiation has been used to interferometrically ablate submicron line patterns on to Kapton polyimide. Such patterned material may exhibit highly anisotropic conduction as was predicted from previous studies showing enhanced conductivity from uniformly ablated material. We are currently exploiting this phenomenon to create integrated devices using conventional polymers as both dielectrics and conductors. Extensive scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and limited transmission electron microscopy (TEM) have been conducted in order to characterize the morphology of such patterned nanostructures as a function of processing conditions.The ablation technique employed produces an interference pattern on the polymer surface of period equal to half that of a diffraction grating period, independent of the laser wavelength. In these experiments, a 328 nm grating has been used to produce line patterns of 164 nm line-spacings as shown in Figures 1 and 2. A 200 Å Au coating has been used to both prevent charging and, perhaps more importantly, enhance contrast.
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