Focused ion beam (FIB) lithography has significant advantages over the electron beam counterpart in terms of resist sensitivity, backscattering, and proximity effects. However, combining the FIB lithography with top surface imaging (TSI) will extend its advantages by allowing anisotropic processing of thicker resist layers. This article reports the development of novel single layer lithography process by combining focused Ga+ ion beam (Ga+ FIB) lithography, silylation, and oxygen dry etching. The negative resist image by dry etching is a TSI scheme for DNQ/novolak based resists and can result in either positive or negative resist images depending on the extent of the ion beam exposure dose. Results show that the Ga+ ion beam dose in the range of 1 - 50 muC/cm(2) at 30 keV can successfully prevent silylation of the resist, thus resulting in the formation of a positive image after the dry etching. A negative image can be formed by using a second Ga+ ion beam exposure with a dose higher than 900 muC/cm(2) at 30 keV to pattern lines into the original exposed resist area. It was observed that resist regions exposed to such high doses can effectively withstand oxygen dry development, thus giving formation of negative resist image. In this study, nanometer resist patterns with a high aspect ratio up to 15 were successfully resolved due to the ion beam exposure and anisotropic dry development. This novel TSI scheme for ion beam lithography could be utilized for the fabrication of critical complementry metal-oxide-semiconductor process steps, such as deep isolation trench formation and lithography over substantial topography. (C) 2004 American Vacuum Society.