High volume nanoimprint lithography on III/V substrates: Imprint fidelity and stamp lifetime

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) has developed from an emerging nanoreplication technology into a mature and industrially viable manufacturing technology. It is now by far the fastest and most cost-efficient nanoreplication method available. This technology has been successfully implemented in the manufacturing of High Brightness LED's. However, manufacturing of HBLED's in high volume using nanoimprint lithography faces a few particular challenges. Perhaps the most significant is to produce perfectly imprinted nanostructures on the epitaxially grown substrates with high quality and yield. This is especially important since the substrates are expensive and since the imprint step is close to the end of the production process. This means that the value of the processed substrates is very high. In this work, 8000 imprints were produced. Measured data from the imprinted substrates shows consistent results. It is also shown that the 8000 imprints have been performed using the same stamp without significant degradation. After 8000 imprints, the yield from the nanoimprint lithography step is 99.15%.