Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
544254 | Microelectronic Engineering | 2013 | 6 Pages |
•Proximity effect of EB lithography makes the fabrication of a fine mold hard.•We have developed a super-resolution technique with an elastic UV curable resin.•In our process, the mechanical deformation was employed using a plastic substrate.•The shrinkage ratio can control with high-accuracy, according to the stretch length.•We have succeeded in improving the dense of a LS mold by almost half again.
There is a strong need for a nanoscale patterning method that offers high throughput and is cost-effective. Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is a major breakthrough for next-generation lithography (NGL) due to its high resolution and simpler process compared to conventional nanoscale patterning techniques. However, as the resolution of NIL depends on the mold size, it is very important to fabricate a fine mold. High-resolution electron beam lithography (EBL) is typically used for mold fabrication, but a large-area mold is difficult to fabricate because of the low throughput of EBL. Moreover, electron scattering, which causes the proximity effect, is a troublesome issue in the EBL process. The proximity effect enlarges the size of the pattern that forms after development of the resist compared to the design pattern size, and makes it difficult to produce a mold pattern that is fine and dense. Therefore, a high-throughput fine patterning technique for a large-area mold is strongly desired. In this study, we demonstrate a super-resolution technique for an NIL mold with a line-and-space (LS) pattern using elastic ultraviolet (UV)-curable resin. As a result, we have succeeded in fabricating a reduced-size replica mold, which is almost half again the density of the master mold, and confirmed UV nanoimprint replication with the reduced-size mold.
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