Electron beam lithography, a helpful tool for nanooptics

Nanooptics, in particular optics with nanometric metal structures is currently a fast developing field of science, motivated by the prospects of good integrateability to microelectronics. In the following, we give a short introduction to the field of nanooptics and its link to microelectronics and we discuss the importance of e-beam lithography for the fabrication of nanooptical elements. Two examples of a possible advantageous application of nanooptical elements are given: Spectrally coded data storage and light guiding by sub-micron metal structures.