• 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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.883-884
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• 2009

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.04a
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• pp.153-158
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• 2007

Since the introduction of Nanoimprint in the mid-1990s, Nanoimprint lithography, a low-cost, non-convential method, has been the dominant lithography technology that guarantees high-throughput patterning of nanostructures. Based on the mechanical embossing mechanism, Nanoimprint lithography creates the nanopatterns on the polymer material cast on the substrate. In essence, the process needs nanofabrication equipment for printing with the adequate control of temperature, pressure and control of parallels of the stamp and substrate. This article introduce the possibility and reality of the thermal control on the hot plate using a CFD code. Numerical computation has been conducted for assessing the feasibility of a hot plate($120{\times}120\;mm2$). PID control is adopted to ensure high temperature uniformity in several zones. Parallel experiments have also been performed for verifying thermal performance. Not only show the results the optimum number of thermocouples related to controllers but also suggest that the thermal simulation using a CFD code would be an alternative method to design and develop the thermal control equipment in the financial aspect.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2003.06a
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• pp.1220-1223
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• 2003

The UV nanoimprint technology uses the UV light as the energy source. Because the imprint process is carried out in room temperature and low pressure, this technology has its own merits compared to the thermal nanoimprint. However, in UV nanoimprint technology, a resin which has low viscosity is essential for the improvement of accuracy. In this research, a resin (named as IMS01) which has relatively low viscosity was developed. And a measurement system was developed in order to measure the degree of cure of the resin. The measurement system which is composed of FT-IR, UV light source and optical guide can measure the degree of cure in real time. From the experimental results, it was found that the IMS01 is cured more rapidly than existing resin (PAK01).

• 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.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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.199-204
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• 2007

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.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.16 no.4 s.94
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• pp.282-287
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• 2007

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.

• KSBB Journal
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.433-437
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• 2007

A constant desire has been to fabricate nanopatterns for biochip and the Ultraviolet-nano imprint lithography (UV-NIL) is promising technology especially compared with thermal type in view of cost effectiveness. By using this method, nano-scale to micro-scale structures also called nanopore structures can be fabricated on large scale gold plate at normal conditions such as room temperature or low pressure which is not possible in thermal type lithography. One of the most important methods in fabricating biochips, immobilizing, was processed successfully by using this technology. That means immobilizing proteins only on the nanopore structures based on gold, not on hardened resin by UV is now possible by utilizing this method. So this selective nano-patterning process of protein can be useful method fabricating nanoscale protein chip.