Prof. Dr. Juergen Brugger

Grayscale patterning offers a powerful alternative to binary nanolithography by enabling continuous control of topography in a single fabrication step. In that sense, the title’s “goodbye binary” is intentionally provocative. In this talk, we present thermal scanning probe lithography (TSPL) as a versatile approach for grayscale nanopatterning, where localized polymer sublimation is governed by the interplay between temperature, applied force, and dwell time. The resulting depth-modulated resist profiles can serve directly as functional templates or be transferred into underlying materials by etching. Recent applications, including strain engineering of 2D materials, will be highlighted. We further discuss advances in probe engineering using electron-beam-induced deposition to enable higher-aspect-ratio features, as well as emerging parallelization strategies based on multi-tip architectures to improve throughput.