Numerical Analysis Based on Continuum Hypothesis in Nano-imprining process

연속체 개념에 기반한 나노 임프린트 공정해석 연구

Nano-imprint lithography(NIL) is a polymer embossing technique, capable of transferring nano-scale patterns onto a thin film of thermoplastics such as polymethyl methacrylate(PMMA) using this parallel process. Feature size down 10 nm have been demonstrated. In NIL, the pattern is formed by displacing polymer material, which can be squeeze flow of a viscous liquid. Due to the size of the pattern, a thorough understood of the process through experiments may be very different. Therefore we nead to resort to numerical simulation on the embossing process. Generally, there are two ways of numerical simulation on nano-scale flow, namely top-down and bottom-up approach. Top-down approach is a way to simulate the flow assuming that polymer is a continuum. On the contrary, in the bottom-up approach, simulation is peformed using molecular dynamics(MD). However, as latter method is not feasible yet. we chose the top-down approach. For the numerical analysis, two dimensional moving grid was used since the moving grid can predict the flow front. Effects of surface tension as well as the slip at the boundary were also considered.