Abstract
This paper describes the research to minimize the film stress and maximize the aspect ratio of photoresist structure, especially about SU-8 for electroplating mold. UV LIGA process using SU-8 allows fabricating high aspect ratio polymer structures. However, it is hard to get fine patterns in the high aspect ratio structures because of high internal stress and difficulty of removing SU-8. The purpose of this paper is to setup the process condition for the obtainment of both low film stress and high aspect ratio and to find design rules that make the pattern be less dependent on stress problem. Firstly, the process of heat treatment and exposure of SU-8 are proposed. These two conditions control the amount of cross-linkage in polymer structure, which is the most important parameter of both pattern generation and remaining stress. Heat treatment is dealed with soft bake and post-exposure-bake. Temperature and time duration of each step are varied with heat treatment condition. Some test patterns are fabricated to evaluate the proposed process. Nickel electroplating is performed with the mold fabricated through the proposed process to confirm the SU-8 as a good electroplating mold.
