• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.223-230
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• 2006

The reliability of imprint patterns molded by stamps for industrial application of nanoimprint lithography (NIL), is an important issue. Usually, defects can be produced by incomplete filling of negative patterns and the shrinkage phenomenon of polymers in conventional NIL. In this paper, the patterns that undergo a varied temperature or varied pressure period during the thermal NIL process have been investigated, with the goal of resolving the shrinkage and defective filling problems of polymers. The effects on the formation of polymer patterns in several profiles of imprint processes are also studied. Consequently, it is observed that more precise patterns are formed by the varied temperature (VT-NIL) or varied pressure (VP-NIL). The NIL (VT-NIL or VP-NIL) process has a free space compensation effect on the polymers in stamp cavities. From the results of the experiments, the polymer's filling capability can be improved. The VT-NIL is merged with the VP-NIL for the better filling property. The patterns that have been imprinted in the merged NIL are compared with the results of conventional NIL. In this study, the improvement in the reliability for results of thermal NIL has been achieved.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.93-98
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• 2013

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is a next generation technology for fabrication of micrometer and nanometer scale patterns. There have been considerable attentions on NIL due to its potential abilities that enable cost-effective and high-throughput nanofabrication to the display device and semiconductor industry. To successfully imprint a nanosized pattern with the thermal NIL, the process conditions such as temperature and pressure should be appropriately selected. This starts with a clear understanding of polymer material behavior during the thermal NIL process. In this paper, a filling process of the polymer resist into nanometer scale cavities during the thermal NIL at the temperature range, where the polymer resist shows the viscoelastic behaviors with consideration of stress relaxation effect of the polymer. In the simulation, the filling process and the residual layer formation are numerically investigated. And the effects of pressure and temperature on NIL process, specially the residual layer formation are discussed.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.1847-1850
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• 2008

The process conditions during ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) process such as temperature, stamping pressure, UV irradiation, etc. are effective factors for successful imprinting of complex and fine patterns. In this study, the effects of aluminum mold on the thermal characteristics of UV-NIL process were investigated through imprinting experiments and numerical simulations. The temperature of polymer resin on mold was measured to study thermal characteristics during UV curing. From the experimental and numerical results, the importance of curing reaction control for UV-NIL process was discussed for deformation characteristics.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.20-26
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• 2008

Nanoimprint lithography(NIL) is becoming next generation lithography of significant interest due to its low cost and a potential patterning resolution of 10nm or less. Success of the NIL relies on the adequate conditions of pressure, temperature and time. To have the adequate conditions for NIL, one has to understand the polymer flowing behavior during the imprinting process. In this paper, an analytical approach of polymer flow in thermal NIL was performed based on the squeeze flow with partial slip boundary conditions. Velocity profiles and pressure distributions of the polymer flow were obtained and imprinting forces and residual thickness were predicted with the consideration of the slip velocity between the polymer and the mold/substrate. The results show that the consideration of the slip is very important for investigating the polymer flow in Thermal NIL.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.68-74
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• 2017

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is a next generation technology for fabrication of micrometer and nanometer scale patterns. There have been considerable attentions on NIL due to its potential abilities that enable cost-effective and high-throughput nanofabrication to the display device and semiconductor industry. Up to now there have been a lot of researches on thermal NIL, but most of them have been focused on polymer deformation in the molding process and there are very few studies on the cooling and demolding process. In this paper a cooling process of the polymer resist in thermal NIL is analyzed with finite element method. The modeling of cooling process for mold, polymer resist and substrate is developed. And the cooling process is numerically investigated with the effects of imprinting temperature and residual layer thickness of polymer resist on stress distribution of the polymer resist. The results show that the lower imprinting temperature, the higher the maximum von Mises stress and that the thicker the residual layer, the greater maximum von Mises stress.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.37-42
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• 2012

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) has attracted broad interest as a low cost method to define nanometer scale patterns in recent years. A major disadvantage of thermal NIL is the thermal cycle, that is, heating over glass transition temperature and then cooling below it, which requires a significant amount of processing time and limits the throughput. One of the methods to overcome this disadvantage is to improve the cooling performance in NIL process. In this paper, the performance of the cooling system of thermal NIL is numerically investigated by SolidWorks Flow Simulation program. The calculated temperatures of nanoimprint device were verified by the measurements. By using the analysis model, the effects of the change of flow velocity and cooler location on the cooling performance are investigated. For the 6 cases (0.1 m/s, 0.5 m/s, 1 m/s, 3 m/s, 5 m/s, 10 m/s) of flow velocity and for the 6 cases of distances (50 mm, 40 mm, 30 mm, 20 mm, 10 mm, 1 mm) of cooler location, the heat conjugated flow analyses are performed and discussed.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.68-75
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• 2009

A major disadvantage of thermal nanoimprint lithography(NIL) is the thermal cycle, that is, heating over glass transition temperature and then cooling below it, which requires a significant amount of processing time and limits the throughput. One of the methods to overcome this disadvantage is to make the processing temperature lower Accordingly, it is necessary to determine the effects on the processing parameters for thermal NIL at reduced temperatures and to optimize the parameters. This starts with a clear understanding of polymer material behavior during the NIL process. In this work, the squeezing and filling of thin polymer films into nanocavities during the low temperature thermal NIL have been investigated based upon a two-dimensional viscoelastic finite element analysis in order to understand how the process conditions affect a pattern quality; Pressure and initial polymer resist thickness dependency of cavity filling behaviors has been investigated.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.89-94
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• 2011

In recent years there have been considerable attentions on nanoimprint lithography (NIL) by the display device and semiconductor industry due to its potential abilities that enable cost-effective and high-throughput nanofabrication. A major disadvantage of thermal NIL is the thermal cycle, that is, heating over glass transition temperature and then cooling below it, which requires a significant amount of processing time and limits the throughput. One of the methods to overcome this disadvantage is to improve the cooling performance in NIL process. In this paper, a numerical analysis model of cooling system in thermal NIL was development by CAD/CAE program and the performance of the cooling system was analyzed by the model. The calculated temperatures of nanoimprint device were verified by the measurements. By using the analysis model, the case that the cooling material is replaced by liquid nitrogen is investigated.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.15-20
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• 2013

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is the next generation photolithography process in which the photoresist is dispensed onto the substrate in its liquid form and then imprinted and cured into a desired pattern instead of using traditional optical system. There have been considerable attentions on NIL due to its potential abilities that enable cost-effective and high-throughput nanofabrication to the display device and semiconductor industry. In this paper, a pressure vessel type imprinting system was used to imprint patterns with two type pressure values (25 bar, 30 bar) and two type pressure keeping times (5 min, 10 min). The height of transferred pattern and the thickness of residual layer were measured and effects of pressurization conditions - pressure and pressure keeping time - on the pattern transfer in thermal NIL were investigated.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.29-34
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• 2010

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is an emerging technology enabling cost effective and high throughput nanofabrication. To successfully imprint a nanometer scale patterns, the understanding of the mechanism in nanoimprint forming is essential. In this paper, a numerical analysis of polymer flow in thermal NIL was performed. First, a finite element model of the periodic mold structure with prescribed boundary conditions was established. Then, the volume of fluid (VOF) and grid deformation method were utilized to calculate the free surfaces of the polymer flow based on an Eulerian grid system. From the simulation, the velocity fields and the imprinting pressure for constant imprinting velocity in thermal NIL were obtained. The velocity field is significant because it can directly describe the mode of the polymer deformation, which is the key role to determine the mechanism of nanoimprint forming. Effects of different mold shapes and various thicknesses of polymer resist were also investigated.