ENFOL

Heat and Light is a minority shareholder in ENFOL Ltd established to develop Richard Blaikie's work on Evanescent Near-Field Optical Lithography (ENFOL).  Sam Lowrey has worked on this with Richard over the years and between then Richard and Sam make up the balance of the shareholding.

ENFOL offers the opportunity to develop a low cost way to solve the rapid prototyping bottleneck for photonic and related components (e.g. meta-surfaces), undercutting existing alternatives, particularly for low volume runs (5 - 10,000 off).  In particular it should enable arbitrary patterns with ~60nm features on non-planar surfaces, leveraging off existing contact optical lithography infrastructure.  These resolutions are adequate for most commercial photonic components where CMOS technology is overkill.  In addition the potential to use contact optical lithography on non-planar surfaces for multiple reproductions looks unique.

So ENFOL has the potential to sit between expensive one‑off Electron Beam Lithography and high volume Nanoimprint Lithography or full foundries.  It promises the potential to speed up product development and research in the rapidly growing photonics/quantum/meta-surface industries.

However the ENFOL process has traditionally suffered from a number of weaknesses that have stood in the way of the development of practical instruments to exploit it.  The key individuals involved in ENFOL Ltd have a long history of working in this area (Richard Blaikie is recognised internationally as one of the originators and leading experts on it).

Based on this expertise and recent developments in the field, ENFOL Ltd can see ways to overcome these traditional problems.  The company has been set up to undertake the necessary risk reduction to demonstrate this, and then take the resultant instrument/process to market.

Directors are Richard Blaikie, Sam Lowrey and Simon Arnold.