Fabrication of Master for a Spiral Pattern in the Order of 50nm

A spirally arrayed nano-pattern is designed as a model pattern for the next generation optical storage media. The pattern consists off types of embossed rectangular dot, which are 50nm, 100nm, 150nm and 200nm in length and 50nm in width. The height of the dot is designed to be 50nm. The pitch of the spiral track of the pattern is 100nm. A ER(Electron resist) master for this pattern is fabricated by e-beam lithography process. The ER is first spin-coated to be 50nm thick on a Si wafer and then the model pattern is written on the coated ER layer by e-beam. After developing this pattern written wafer in the solution, a ER pattern master is fabricated. The most conventional e-beam machine can write patterns in orthogonal way, so we made our own pattern generator which can write the pattern in circular or spiral way. This program generates the patterns to be compatible with the e-beam machine from Raith(Raith 150). To fabricate 50nm pattern master precisely, a series of experiments were done including the design compensation for the pattern size, optimization of the dose, acceleration voltage, aperture size and developing. Through these experiments, we conclude that the higher accelerating voltages and smaller aperture size are better for mastering the nano pattern which is in order of 50nm. With the optimized e-beam lithography process, a spiral arrayed 50nm pattern master adopting PMMA resist was fabricated to have dimensional accuracy over 95% compared to the designed. Using this pattern master, a metal pattern stamp will be fabricated by Ni electro plating for injection molding of the patterned plastic substrate.

50nm급 불연속 나선형 패턴의 마스터 제작