• KSBB Journal
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.433-437
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• 2007

A constant desire has been to fabricate nanopatterns for biochip and the Ultraviolet-nano imprint lithography (UV-NIL) is promising technology especially compared with thermal type in view of cost effectiveness. By using this method, nano-scale to micro-scale structures also called nanopore structures can be fabricated on large scale gold plate at normal conditions such as room temperature or low pressure which is not possible in thermal type lithography. One of the most important methods in fabricating biochips, immobilizing, was processed successfully by using this technology. That means immobilizing proteins only on the nanopore structures based on gold, not on hardened resin by UV is now possible by utilizing this method. So this selective nano-patterning process of protein can be useful method fabricating nanoscale protein chip.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.16 no.4 s.94
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• pp.282-287
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• 2007

Hot embossing, one of Nanoimprint Lithography(NIL) techniques, has been getting attention as an alternative candidate of next generation patterning technologies by the advantages of simplicity and low cost compared to conventional photolithographies. A typical hot embossing usually, however, takes more than ten minutes for one cycle of the process because of a long thermal cycling. Over the last few years a number of studies have been made to reduce the cycle time for hot embossing or similar patterning processes. The target of this research is to develop an induction heating apparatus for heating a metallic micro patterning mold at very high speed with the large-area uniformity of temperature distribution. It was found that a 0.5 mm-thick nickel mold can be heated from $25^{\circ}C\;to\;150^{\circ}C$ within 1.5 seconds with the temperature variation of ${\pm}5^{\circ}C$ in 4-inch diameter area, using the induction heating apparatus.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.40-44
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• 2008

The interfacial adhesion energy between resist and a substrate is very important due to resist pull-off problems during separation of mold from a substrate in nanoimprint process. And effect of substrate surface roughness on interfacial adhesion energy is very important. In this paper, we have treated glass wafer surface using $CF_4$ gas for increase surface roughness and it has tested interfacial adhesion properties of UV resin/glass substrate interfaces by 4 point bending test. The interfacial adhesion energies by bare, 30, 60 and 90 sec surface treatments are 0.62, 1.4, 1.36 and 2 $J/m^2$, respectively. The test results showed quantitative comparisons of interfacial fracture energy (G) effect of glass wafer surface roughness.

• 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.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.61-66
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• 2015

Recently, the major trends of NIL are high throughput and large area patterning. For UV NIL, if it can be proceeded in the non-vacuum environment, which greatly simplifies tool construction and greatly shorten process times. However, one key issue in non-vacuum environment is air bubble formation problem. In this paper, numerical analysis of bubble defect of UV NIL is performed. Fluent, flow analysis focused program was utilized and VOF (Volume of Fluid) skill was applied. For various resist-substrate and resist-mold angles, effects of velocity inlet and residual layer thickness of resist on bubble defect formation were investigated. The numerical analyses show that the increases of velocity inlet and residual layer thickness can cause the bubble defect formation, however the decreases of velocity inlet and residual layer thickness take no difference in the bubble defect formation.

• 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.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.31-36
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• 2007

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is a new lithographic method that offers a sub-10nm feature size, high throughput, and low cost. One of the most serious problems of NIL is the stiction between mold and resist. The antistiction layer coating is very effective to prevent this stiction and ensure the successful NIL results. In this paper, an antistiction layer was deposited by VSAM (vapor self assembly monolayer) method on silicon samples with FOTS (perfluoroctyltrichlorosilane) as a precursor for making an antistiction layer. A specially designed LPCVD (low pressure chemical vapor deposition) was used for this experiment. All experiments were achieved after removing the humidity. First, the evaporation test of FOTS was performed for checking the evaporation temperature at low pressure. FOTS was evaporated at 5 Tow and $110^{\circ}C$. In order to evaluate the temperature effect on antistiction layer, chamber temperature was changed from 50 to $170^{\circ}C$ with 0.1ml of FOTS for 1 minute. Good hydrophobicity of all samples was shown at about $110^{\circ}$ of contact angle and under $20^{\circ}$ of hysteresis. The surface energies of all samples calculated by Lewis acid/base theory was shown to be about 15mN/m. The deposited thicknesses of all samples measured by ellipsometry were almost 1nm that was similar value of the calculated molecular length. The surface roughness of all samples was not changed after deposition but the friction force showed relatively high values and deviations deposited at under $110^{\circ}$. Also the white circles were founded in LFM images under $110^{\circ}$. High friction forces were guessed based on this irregular deposition. The optimized VSAM process for FOTS was achieved at $170^{\circ}C$, 5 Torr for 1 hour. The hot embossing process with 4 inch Si mold was successfully achieved after VSAM deposition.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.4178-4184
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• 2013

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is an emerging technology enabling cost-effective and high-throughput nanofabrication. Recently, the major trends of NIL are high throughput and large area patterning. UV curable type NIL (UV NIL) can be performed at room temperature and low pressure. And one advantage of UV NIL is that it does not need vacuum, which greatly simplifies tool construction, so that vacuum oprated high-precision stages and a large vacuum chamber are no longer needed. However, one key issue in non-vacuum environment is air bubble formation problem. Namely, can the air bubbles be completely removed from the resist. In this paper, the air bubbles formation by the method of droplet application in UV NIL with non-vacuum environment are experimentally studied. The effects of the volume of droplet and the number of dispensing points on air bubble formation are investigated.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.268-273
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• 2009

Ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL), which is performed at a low pressure and at room temperature, is known as a low cost method for the fabrication of nano-scale patterns. In the patterning process, maintaining the uniformity of the residual layer is critical as the pattern transfer of features to the substrate must include the timed etch of the residual layer prior to the etching of the transfer layer. In pursuit of a thin and uniform residual layer thickness, the initial volume and the position of each droplet both need to be optimized. However, the monomer mixtures of resin had a tendency to evaporate. The evaporation rate depends on not only time, but also the initial volume of the monomer droplet. In order to decide the initial volume of each droplet, the accurate prediction of evaporation behavior is required. In this study, the theoretical model of the evaporation behavior of resin droplets was developed and compared with the available experimental data in the literature. It is confirmed that the evaporation rate of a droplet is not proportional to the area of its free surface, but to the length of its contact line. Finally, the parameter of the developed theoretical model was calculated by curve fitting to decide the initial volume of resin droplets.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.167-170
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• 2005

The two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) diamond-like carbon (DLC) stamps for ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) were fabricated using two kinds of methods, which were a DLC coating process followed by the focused ion beam (FIB) lithography and the two-photon polymerization (TPP) patterning followed by nano-scale thick DLC coating. We fabricated 70 nm deep lines with a width of 100 nm and 70 nm deep lines with a width of 150 nm on 100 nm thick DLC layers coated on quartz substrates using the FIB lithography. 200 nm wide lines, 3D rings with a diameter of $1.35\;{\mu}m$ and a height of $1.97\;{\mu}m$, and a 3D cone with a bottom diameter of $2.88\;{\mu}m$ and a height of $1.97\;{\mu}m$ were successfully fabricated using the TPP patterning and DLC coating process. The wafers were successfully printed on an UV-NIL using the DLC stamp. We could see the excellent correlation between the dimensions of features of stamp and the corresponding imprinted features.