  We have created periodic nanoscale structures in a gold substrate with a
lithography process using metastable triplet helium atoms that damage a
hydrofobic resist layer on top of the substrate. A beam of metastable helium
atoms is transversely cooled and guided through an intense standing-wave light
field. Compared to commonly used low-power optical masks, a high-power light
field (saturation parameter of 10E7) increases the confinement of the atoms in
the standing-wave considerably, and makes the alignment of the experimental
setup less critical. Due to the high internal energy of the metastable helium
atoms (20 eV), a dose of only one atom per resist molecule is required. With an
exposure time of only eight minutes, parallel lines with a separation of 542 nm
and a width of 100 nm (1/11th of the wavelength used for the optical mask) are
created.
