• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.101-102
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• 2006

PZT thin films, which are the representative ferroelectric materials in ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM), have some serious problem such as the imprint, retention and fatigue which ferroelectric properties are degraded by repetitive polarization. BL T thin film capacitors were fabricated by plasma etching, however, the plasma etching of BLT thin film was known to be very difficult. In our previous study, the ferroelectric materials such as PZT and BLT were patterned by chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) using damascene process to top electrode/ferroelectric material/bottom electrode. It is also possible to pattern the BLT thin film capacitors by CMP, however, the CMP damage was not considered in the experiments. The properties of BLT thin films were changed by the change of polishing pressure although the removal rate was directly proportional to the polishing pressure in CMP process.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.225-230
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• 2006

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is a novel method of fabricating nanometer scale patterns. It is a simple process with low cost, high throughput and resolution. NIL creates patterns by mechanical deformation of an imprint resist and physical contact process. The imprint resist is typically a monomer or polymer formulation that is cured by heat or UV light during the imprinting process. Stiction between the resist and the stamp is resulted from this physical contact process. Stiction issue is more important in the stamps including narrow pattern size and wide area. Therefore, the antistiction layer coating is very effective to prevent this problem and ensure successful NIL. In this paper, an antistiction layer was deposited and characterized by PECVD (plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition) method for metal stamps. Deposition rates of an antistiction layer on Si and Ni substrates were in proportion to deposited time and 3.4 nm/min and 2.5 nm/min, respectively. A 50 nm thick antistiction layer showed 90% relative transmittance at 365 nm wavelength. Contact angle result showed good hydrophobicity over 105 degree. $CF_2$ and $CF_3$ peaks were founded in ATR-FTIR analysis. The thicknesses and the contact angle of a 50 nm thick antistiction film were slightly changed during chemical resistance test using acetone and sulfuric acid. To evaluate the deposited antistiction layer, a 50 nm thick film was coated on a stainless steel stamp made by wet etching process. A PMMA substrate was successfully imprinting without pattern degradations by the stainless steel stamp with an antistiction layer. The test result shows that antistiction layer coating is very effective for NIL.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.14 no.5 s.77
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• pp.473-476
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• 2005

The demand of on-chip total analyzing system with MEMS (micro electro mechanical system) bio/chemical sensor is rapidly increasing. In on-chip total analyzing system, to detect the bio/chemical products with submicron feature size, a filtration system with nano-filter is required. One of the conventional methods to fabricate nano-filter is to use direct patterning or RIE (reactive ion etching). However, those procedures are very costly and are not suitable fur mass production. In this study, we suggested new fabrication method for a nano-filter based on replication process, which is simple and low cost process. After the Si master was fabricated by laser interference lithography and reactive ion etching process, the polymeric mold was replicated by UV-imprint process. Metallic nano-filter was fabricated after removing the polymeric part of metal deposited polymeric mold. Finally, our fabrication method was applied to metallic nano-filter with $1{\mu}m$ pitch size and $0.4{\mu}m$ hole size for bacteria sensor application.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.251.1-251.1
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• 2013

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.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.8-15
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• 2018

Films with special properties (e.g., water-repellent films, optical films, anti-reflection films, and flexible films) are referred to as functional films. Recently, there has been interest in fine patterning methods for film fabrication. In particular there have been many studies that use a UV nanoimprint process involving a UV curing method. In this paper, a polymer film was fabricated by the UV nanoimprint process with a micro-pattern, and its durability was evaluated by a wear test and a nano-indentation test. The film mechanical properties (such as coefficient of friction, hardness, and modulus of elasticity) were measured. Moreover, the choice of PUA type resin used in the UV nanoimprint process was confirmed to impact the durability of the thin film. Despite making the polymer film samples using the same method and PUA type resin, different coefficient of friction, hardness, and modulus of elasticity values were obtained. PUA 4 resin had the most favorable coefficient of friction, hardness, and modulus of elasticity. This material is predicted to produce a high durability functional film.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.333-338
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• 2003

Nano-imprint lithography(NIL) is a polymer embossing technique, capable of transferring nano-scale patterns onto a thin film of thermoplastics such as polymethyl methacrylate(PMMA) using this parallel process. Feature size down 10 nm have been demonstrated. In NIL, the pattern is formed by displacing polymer material, which can be squeeze flow of a viscous liquid. Due to the size of the pattern, a thorough understood of the process through experiments may be very different. Therefore we nead to resort to numerical simulation on the embossing process. Generally, there are two ways of numerical simulation on nano-scale flow, namely top-down and bottom-up approach. Top-down approach is a way to simulate the flow assuming that polymer is a continuum. On the contrary, in the bottom-up approach, simulation is peformed using molecular dynamics(MD). However, as latter method is not feasible yet. we chose the top-down approach. For the numerical analysis, two dimensional moving grid was used since the moving grid can predict the flow front. Effects of surface tension as well as the slip at the boundary were also considered.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.71-71
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• 2003

Hot embossing has been widely accepted as an alternative to photolithography in generating patterns on polymeric substrates. The optimization of embossing process should be accomplished based on polymer substrate materials. In this paper, the effect of polymer substrates on nano scale hot embossing process was studied. Silicon molds with nano size patterns were fabricated by e-beam direct writing. Molds were coated with self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of (1, 1, 2.2H -perfluorooctyl)-trichlorosilane to reduce the stiction between mold and substrates. For an embossing, pressure of 55, 75 bur, embossing time of 5 min and temperature of above transition temperature were peformed. Polymethylmethacrylates (PMMA) with different molecular weights of 450,000 and 950,000, MR-I 8010 polymer (Micro Resist Technology) and polyaliphatic imide copolymer were applied for hot embossing process development in nano size. These polymers were spun coated on the Si wafer with the thickness between 150 and 200 nm. The nano size patterns obtained after hot embossing were observed and compared based on the polymer properties by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The imprinting uniformity dependent on the Pattern density and size was investigated. Four polymers have been evaluated for the nanoimprint By optimizing the process parameters, the four polymers lead to uniform imprint and good pattern profiles. A reduction in the friction for smooth surfaces during demoulding is possible by polymer selection.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.1-7
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• 2007

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is an emerging technology enabling cost-effective and high-throughput nanofabrication. To successfully imprint a nano-sized pattern, the process conditions such as temperature, pressure, and time should be appropriately selected. This starts with a clear understanding of polymer material behavior during the NIL process. In this work, the squeezing of thin polymer films into nanocavities during the thermal NIL has been investigated based upon a two-dimensional viscoelastic finite element analysis in order to understand how the process conditions affect a pattern quality. The simulations have been performed within the viscoelastic plateau region and the stress relaxation effect has been taken into account.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.353-357
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• 2010

Recently, silicon etching have received much attention for display industry, nano imprint technology, silicon photonics, and MEMS application. After the etching process, removing of etch mask and residue of sidewall is very important. The investigation of the etched mask removing was carried out by using the ashing, HF dipping and acid cleaning process. Experiment shows that oxygen component of reactive gas and photoresist react with silicon and converting them into the mask fence. It is very difficult to remove by using ashing or acid cleaning process because mask fence consisted of Si and O compounds. However, dilute HF dipping is very effective process for SiOx layer removing. Finally, we found optimized condition for etched mask removing.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.672-675
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• 2005

To imprint 70-nm wide line-patterns, we used a newly developed ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) process in which an elementwise patterned stamp (EPS), a large-area stamp, and pressurized air are used to imprint a wafer in a single step. For a single-step UV-NIL of a 4' wafer, we fabricated two identical $5'\times5'\times0.09'(W{\times}L{\times}H)$ quartz EPSs, except that one is with nanopatterns and the other without nanopatterns. Both of them consist of 16 small-area stamps, called elements, each of which is $10\;mm\;\times\;10\;mm$. UV-curable low-viscosity resin droplets were dispensed directly on each element of the EPSs. The volume and viscosity of each droplet are 3.7 nl and 7 cps. Droplets were dispensed in such a way that no air entrapment between elements and wafer occurs. When the droplets were fully pressed between ESP and wafer, some incompletely filled elements were observed because of the topology mismatch between EPS and wafer. To complete those incomplete fillings, pressurized air of 2 bar was applied to the bottom of the wafer for 2 min. Experimental results have shown that nanopatterns of the EPS were successfully transferred to the resin layer on the wafer.