  We present results of a planar process development based on the combination
of electron-beam lithography and dry etching for fabricating high-quality
superconducting photosensitive structures in the sub-100nm regime. The devices
were fabricated by the application of an intrinsic proximity effect suppression
procedure which makes the need for an elaborated correction algorithm redundant
for planar design layouts which are orders of magnitude smaller than the
backscattering length. In addition, we discuss the necessary considerations for
extending the fabrication spatial scale of optical contactlithography with a
mercury arc-discharge photon source down to the order of the exposure photon's
wavelength ( sub-{\mu}m ), thereby minimizing the writing time on the
electron-beam lithograph. Finally we developed a unique and novel technique for
controlling the undercut during a planar lift-off fabrication procedure without
cleaving the wafer.
