Room-Temperature Nanoimprint Lithography
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0961-O02-01
Room-Temperature Nanoimprint Lithography Ken-ichiro Nakamatsu and Shinji Matsui University of Hyogo, 3-1-2 Koto kamigori, Ako, Hyogo, 678-1205, Japan ABSTRACT Room-temperature nanoimprint lithography (RT-NIL) using spin-coated hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) resin as the replication material was developed. HSQ pattern with 50 nm linewidth was successfully obtained by the RT-NIL. Postbaking temperature dependence of a HSQ imprinted depth on a mold linewidth was investigated. HSQ imprinted depth had a dependence on the mold linewidth. This revealed that the RT-NIL is suitable for the linewidths of below 1 µm. Furthermore, we have also developed a new imprinting technique that uses liquid-phase hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) as an alternative to the spin-coated HSQ resin. The liquid-phase HSQ imprint technique enabled fabrication of various HSQ patterns with a wide range of linewidths from 25 nm to 300 µm. Arbitrary patterns, including both submicron and greater than 100 micron patterns, were simultaneously replicated with a one-step imprint process, something very difficult to accomplish with spin-coated HSQ. Moreover, after imprinting, the residual HSQ layer in the compressed area was less than 10 nm thick.
INTRODUCTION Nanoimprint lithography (NIL)
1-7
, in which resist patterns are fabricated by
deforming the physical shape of the resist by embossing the resist with a mold, has currently attracted a plenty of attention from many industrial fields because of its many capabilities for fabricating various micro- and nano-structure applications such as patterned media and quantized magnetic disks with a simple, high-throughput and low cost process.
8-12
. Indeed, a consensus supporting NIL as the prime candidate for next
generation lithography is forming. This technique has excellent features: patterns less than 10 nm in size can be realized over a large area with high throughput and low cost. However, in the conventional NIL, the resist must be heated above the glass transition temperature (Tg) to enable the deformation of the resist with a mold. Consequently, a resist thermal cycle is required that causes serious problems in replicated pattern accuracy, and lowers throughput. Another common imprinting technique, UV-NIL, requires UV exposure prone to causing a resist polymer construction for crosslinking the resist material. To overcome these problems, we have developed room-temperature nanoimprint lithography (RT-NIL) using hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) as the replication material. HSQ has a sufficient dry etching tolerance, which is almost equivalent to that of SiO2, meaning that its replicated patterns can be used as a good dry etching mask. HSQ also has the unique property of enabling NIL at room temperature (RT), meaning that nanostructures can be replicated without a resist thermal cycle and UV-exposure. In this article we demonstrated RT-NIL using spin-coated HSQ as the replication material and replicated 50-nm linewidth.13-15 Furthermore, we also developed a novel imprinting technique that us
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