• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.325-328
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• 2008

With intensive research and development to mass particular nanostructure of 10nm, Nanoimprint lithography will soon be put to practical use. This paper reviews latest research and application trend and also covers technical articles about Nanoimprint lithography technology Published since 1998, including statistical analysis of collected data(Web of Science DB) and related technical trend.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.20-26
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• 2008

Nanoimprint lithography(NIL) is becoming next generation lithography of significant interest due to its low cost and a potential patterning resolution of 10nm or less. Success of the NIL relies on the adequate conditions of pressure, temperature and time. To have the adequate conditions for NIL, one has to understand the polymer flowing behavior during the imprinting process. In this paper, an analytical approach of polymer flow in thermal NIL was performed based on the squeeze flow with partial slip boundary conditions. Velocity profiles and pressure distributions of the polymer flow were obtained and imprinting forces and residual thickness were predicted with the consideration of the slip velocity between the polymer and the mold/substrate. The results show that the consideration of the slip is very important for investigating the polymer flow in Thermal NIL.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.93-98
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• 2013

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is a next generation technology for fabrication of micrometer and nanometer scale patterns. There have been considerable attentions on NIL due to its potential abilities that enable cost-effective and high-throughput nanofabrication to the display device and semiconductor industry. To successfully imprint a nanosized pattern with the thermal NIL, the process conditions such as temperature and pressure should be appropriately selected. This starts with a clear understanding of polymer material behavior during the thermal NIL process. In this paper, a filling process of the polymer resist into nanometer scale cavities during the thermal NIL at the temperature range, where the polymer resist shows the viscoelastic behaviors with consideration of stress relaxation effect of the polymer. In the simulation, the filling process and the residual layer formation are numerically investigated. And the effects of pressure and temperature on NIL process, specially the residual layer formation are discussed.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.89-94
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• 2011

In recent years there have been considerable attentions on nanoimprint lithography (NIL) by the display device and semiconductor industry due to its potential abilities that enable cost-effective and high-throughput nanofabrication. A major disadvantage of thermal 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 improve the cooling performance in NIL process. In this paper, a numerical analysis model of cooling system in thermal NIL was development by CAD/CAE program and the performance of the cooling system was analyzed by the model. The calculated temperatures of nanoimprint device were verified by the measurements. By using the analysis model, the case that the cooling material is replaced by liquid nitrogen is investigated.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.223-230
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• 2006

The reliability of imprint patterns molded by stamps for industrial application of nanoimprint lithography (NIL), is an important issue. Usually, defects can be produced by incomplete filling of negative patterns and the shrinkage phenomenon of polymers in conventional NIL. In this paper, the patterns that undergo a varied temperature or varied pressure period during the thermal NIL process have been investigated, with the goal of resolving the shrinkage and defective filling problems of polymers. The effects on the formation of polymer patterns in several profiles of imprint processes are also studied. Consequently, it is observed that more precise patterns are formed by the varied temperature (VT-NIL) or varied pressure (VP-NIL). The NIL (VT-NIL or VP-NIL) process has a free space compensation effect on the polymers in stamp cavities. From the results of the experiments, the polymer's filling capability can be improved. The VT-NIL is merged with the VP-NIL for the better filling property. The patterns that have been imprinted in the merged NIL are compared with the results of conventional NIL. In this study, the improvement in the reliability for results of thermal NIL has been achieved.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.29-34
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• 2010

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is an emerging technology enabling cost effective and high throughput nanofabrication. To successfully imprint a nanometer scale patterns, the understanding of the mechanism in nanoimprint forming is essential. In this paper, a numerical analysis of polymer flow in thermal NIL was performed. First, a finite element model of the periodic mold structure with prescribed boundary conditions was established. Then, the volume of fluid (VOF) and grid deformation method were utilized to calculate the free surfaces of the polymer flow based on an Eulerian grid system. From the simulation, the velocity fields and the imprinting pressure for constant imprinting velocity in thermal NIL were obtained. The velocity field is significant because it can directly describe the mode of the polymer deformation, which is the key role to determine the mechanism of nanoimprint forming. Effects of different mold shapes and various thicknesses of polymer resist were also investigated.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.604-610
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• 2004

Ultraviolet-nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) is a promising method for cost-effectively defining nanoscale structures at room temperature and low pressure. Since the resolution of transferred nanostructures depends strongly upon that of nanostamps, the nanostamp fabrication technology is a key technology to UV-NIL. In this paper, a $5\times5\times0.09$ in. quartz stamp whose critical dimension is 377 nm was fabricated using the etching process in which a Cr film was employed as a hard mask for transferring nanostructures onto the quartz plate. To effectively apply the fabricated 5-in. stamp to UV-NIL on a 4-in. Si wafer, we have proposed a new UV-NIL process using a multi-dispensing method as a way to supply resist on a wafer. Experiments have shown that the multi-dispensing method can enable UV-NIL using a large-area stamp.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2003.06a
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• pp.199-202
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• 2003

Ultraviolet-nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) is a promising method for cost-effectively defining nanoscale structures at room temperature and low pressure. Since the resolution of nanostructures depends strongly upon that of nanostamps, the nanostamp fabrication technology is a key technology to UV-NIL. In this paper, a 5$\times$5$\times$0.09 in. quartz stamp whose critical dimension is 377 nm was fabricated using the etch process in which a Cr film was employed as a hard mask for transferring nanostructures onto the quartz plate. To effectively apply tile fabricated 5-in. stamp to UV-NIL on a 4-in. Si wafer, we have proposed a new UV-NIL process using a multi-dispensing method as a way to supply resist on a wafer Experiments have shown that the multi-dispensing method can enable UV-NIL rising a large-area stamp.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.633-636
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• 2005

Imprint lithography is a promising method for high-resolution and high-throughput lithography using low-cost equipment. As with other nanoimprint methods, ultraviolet-nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) resolution appears to be limited only by template resolution, and offers a significant cost of ownership reduction when compared to other next generation lithography (NGL) methods such as EUVL and 157 nm lithography. The purpose of this paper is to suggest optimum values of control parameters of Imprio 100 manufactured by Molecular Imprint, Inc., which is the first commercially available UV-NIL tool, for sound nanoimprint. UV-NIL experiments were performed on Imprio 100 to find dispensing recipe for avoiding air entrapment. Dispensing recipe related to residual layer thickness and uniformity was optimized and 40 nm thick residual layer was achieved.