• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.68-75
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• 2009

A major disadvantage of thermal nanoimprint lithography(NIL) is the thermal cycle, that is, heating over glass transition temperature and then cooling below it, which requires a significant amount of processing time and limits the throughput. One of the methods to overcome this disadvantage is to make the processing temperature lower Accordingly, it is necessary to determine the effects on the processing parameters for thermal NIL at reduced temperatures and to optimize the parameters. This starts with a clear understanding of polymer material behavior during the NIL process. In this work, the squeezing and filling of thin polymer films into nanocavities during the low temperature thermal NIL have been investigated based upon a two-dimensional viscoelastic finite element analysis in order to understand how the process conditions affect a pattern quality; Pressure and initial polymer resist thickness dependency of cavity filling behaviors has been investigated.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.364-367
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• 2007

In nano-imprint lithography (NIL) process, which has shown to be a good method to fabricate polymeric patterns, several kinds of pattern defects due to thermal effects during polymer flow and mold release operation have been reported. A typical defect in NIL process with high aspect ratio and low resist thickness pattern is a resist fracture during the mold release operation. It seems due to interfacial adhesion between polymer and mold. However, in the present investigation, FEM simulation of NIL molding process was carried out to predict the defects of the polymer pattern and to optimize the process by FEA. The embossing operation in NIL process was investigated in detail by FEM. From the analytical results, it was found that the lateral flow of polymer resin and the applied pressure in the embossing operation induce the weld line and the drastic lateral strain at the edge of pattern. It was also shown that the low polymer-thickness result in the delamination of polymer from the substrate. It seems that the above phenomena cause the defects of the final polymer pattern. To reduce the defect, it is important to check the initial resin thickness.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.144-153
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• 2009

It is widely known that no-slip assumptions are often violated on regular basis in micrometer- or nanometer-scale fluid flow. In the case of cavity-filling process of nanoimprint lithography(NIL), slip phenomena take place naturally at the solid-to-liquid boundaries, that is, at the mold-to-polymer or polymer-to-substrate boundaries. If the slip or partial slip phenomena are promoted at the boundaries, the processing time of NIL, especially of thermal-NIL which consumes more tact time than that of UV-NIL, can be significantly improved. In this paper it is aimed to elucidate how the cavity-filling process of NIL can be influenced by the slip phenomena at boundaries and to what degree those phenomena increase the process rate. To do so, computational fluid dynamics(CFD) analysis of cavity filling process has been carried out. Also, the effect of mold pattern shape and initial thickness of polymer resist were considered in the analysis, as well.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1838-1843
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• 2014

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) fabrication process is regarded as the main alternative to existing expensive photo-lithography in areas such as micro- and nano-electronics including optical components and sensors, as well as the solar cell and display device industries. Functional patterns, including anti-reflective moth-eye pattern, photonic crystal pattern, fabricated by NIL can improve the overall efficiency of such devices. To successfully imprint a nano-sized pattern, the process conditions such as temperature, pressure, and time should be appropriately selected. In this paper, a cavity-filling process of the moth-eye pattern during the thermal-NIL within the temperature range, where the polymer resist shows the viscoelastic behaviors with consideration of stress relaxation effect of the polymer, were investigated with three-dimensional finite element analysis. The effects of initial thickness of polymer resist and imprinting pressure on cavity-filling process has been discussed. From the analysis results it was found that the cavity filling can be completed within 100 s, under the pressure of more than 4 MPa.

• Advances in nano research
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.199-206
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• 2022

We present the high-brightness large-area 10.1" in-cell polarizer display panel integrated with a wire grid polarizer (WGP) and metal reflector, from the initial design to final system development in a commercially feasible level. We have modeled and developed the WGP architecture integrated with the metal reflector in a single in-cell layer, to achieve excellent polarization efficiency as well as brightness enhancement through the light recycling effect. After the optimization of key experimental parameters via Taguchi method, the roll nanoimprint lithography employing a flexible large-area tiled mold has been utilized to create the 90 nm-pitch polymer resist pattern with the 54.1 nm linewidth and 5.1 nm residual layer thickness. The 90 nm-pitch Al gratings with the 51.4 nm linewidth and 2150 Å height have been successfully fabricated after subsequent etch process, providing the in-cell WGPs with high optical performance in the entire visible light regime. Finally we have integrated the WGP in a commercial 10.1" display device and demonstrated its actual operation, exhibiting 1.24 times enhancement of brightness compared to a conventional film polarizer-based one, with the contrast ratio of 1,004:1. Polarization efficiency and transmittance of the developed WGPs in an in-cell polarizer panel achieve 99.995 % and 42.3 %, respectively.