Oxidative Etching of Imprinted Nanopatterns by Combination of Vacuum Annealing and Plasma Treatment

Combination of oxidative vacuum annealing and oxygen plasma treatment can serve as a simple and efficient method of line-width modification of imprinted nanopatterns. Since the vacuum annealing and oxygen plasma could lead mass loss of polymeric materials, either one of the process can yield a narrowed patterns. However, the vacuum annealing process usually demands quite high temperatures (${\geq}300^{\circ}C$) and extended annealing time to get appreciable line-width reduction. Although the plasma treatment may be considered as an effective low temperature rapid process for the line-width reduction, it is also suffering for the lowered controllability on application to very fine patterns. We have found that the vacuum annealing temperature can be lowered by introducing the oxygen in the vacuum process and that the combination of oxygen plasma treatment with the vacuum annealing could yield the best result in the line-with reduction of the imprinted polymeric nanopatterns. Well-defined line width reduction by more than 50% was successfully demonstrated at relatively low temperatures. Furthermore, it was verified that this process was applicable to the nanopatterns of different shapes and materials.