Ionic liquids—a novel material for planar photonics

Electron beam patterning is an important technology in the fabrication of miniaturized photonic devices. The fabrication process conventionally involves the use of radiation sensitive polymer-based solutions (called resists). We propose to replace typical polymer resists with eco-friendly solvent-free room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs), which are polymerized in situ and solidified by an electron beam. It is demonstrated that the shapes of polymerized structures are different for high-viscous Cl-based RTILs and low-viscous NTf₂-based RTILs. Due to the the satisfactory quality of the polymerized spatial microstructures and their light transmission properties, the RTIL-derived microstructures are potentially attractive as photonic elements for near-infrared. (paper)