Development of a large area plate-to-plate type UV imprinting tool

A UV imprint lithography tool has been developed for micro/nano-scale patterning in an extremely large area, i.e., ∼300 × 400 mm2. To achieve high pattern fidelity, residual-layer thickness uniformity, and an air bubble-free layer in a large area, the UV imprint tool has several main components including a silicon rubber uniform pressurizer, a large area UV-LED module, a vacuum pump, a chuck module, etc. Contact and structural analyses have been performed using commercial FEM packages such as LS-DYNA and ANSYS. The developed tool has been tested, and its performance indices including pattern fidelity and residual-layer thickness uniformity have been measured to be ∼97% and ∼90%, respectively.