미세 임프린팅용 금속몰드의 급속가열을 위한 유도가열기구 개발

Development of Induction Heating Apparatus for Rapid Heating of Metallic Mold

Hot embossing, one of Nanoimprint Lithography(NIL) techniques, has been getting attention as an alternative candidate of next generation patterning technologies by the advantages of simplicity and low cost compared to conventional photolithographies. A typical hot embossing usually, however, takes more than ten minutes for one cycle of the process because of a long thermal cycling. Over the last few years a number of studies have been made to reduce the cycle time for hot embossing or similar patterning processes. The target of this research is to develop an induction heating apparatus for heating a metallic micro patterning mold at very high speed with the large-area uniformity of temperature distribution. It was found that a 0.5 mm-thick nickel mold can be heated from $25^{\circ}C$ to $150^{\circ}C$ within 1.5 seconds with the temperature variation of ${\pm}5^{\circ}C$ in 4-inch diameter area, using the induction heating apparatus.