Frictional scanning probe lithography of advanced materials for dielectric nanophotonics

Creating photonic circuits based on advanced dielectric nanophotonic materials is complicated by the difficulty of selecting effective etchants when using standard lithography methods. We propose a universal approach of frictional mechanical scanning probe lithography, which consists of the local removal of material using a sharp diamond probe tip. We demonstrate planar waveguides and disk microresonators made from 200 nm thick GaP layer grown on sapphire substrate and a 40 nm thick MoSe2microdisk cavities exhibiting an optical quality factor reaching 100.