• Proceedings of the Korean Magnestics Society Conference
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• 2015.05a
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• pp.137-137
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• 2015

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.287-288
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• 2010

• 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 Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.1-7
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• 2007

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is an emerging technology enabling cost-effective and high-throughput nanofabrication. To successfully imprint a nano-sized pattern, the process conditions such as temperature, pressure, and time should be appropriately selected. This starts with a clear understanding of polymer material behavior during the NIL process. In this work, the squeezing of thin polymer films into nanocavities during the thermal NIL has been investigated based upon a two-dimensional viscoelastic finite element analysis in order to understand how the process conditions affect a pattern quality. The simulations have been performed within the viscoelastic plateau region and the stress relaxation effect has been taken into account.

• 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.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.144-153
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• 2009

It is widely known that no-slip assumptions are often violated on regular basis in micrometer- or nanometer-scale fluid flow. In the case of cavity-filling process of nanoimprint lithography(NIL), slip phenomena take place naturally at the solid-to-liquid boundaries, that is, at the mold-to-polymer or polymer-to-substrate boundaries. If the slip or partial slip phenomena are promoted at the boundaries, the processing time of NIL, especially of thermal-NIL which consumes more tact time than that of UV-NIL, can be significantly improved. In this paper it is aimed to elucidate how the cavity-filling process of NIL can be influenced by the slip phenomena at boundaries and to what degree those phenomena increase the process rate. To do so, computational fluid dynamics(CFD) analysis of cavity filling process has been carried out. Also, the effect of mold pattern shape and initial thickness of polymer resist were considered in the analysis, as well.

• 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.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.90-98
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• 2016

A numerical study is conducted on thermal performance of a large-area hot plate specially designed as a heating and cooling tool for thermal nanoimprint lithography process. The hot plate has a dimension of $240mm{\times}240mm{\times}20mm$, in which a series of cartridge heaters and cooling holes are installed. The material is stainless steel selected for enduring the high molding pressure. A numerical model based on the ANSYS Fluent is employed to predict the thermal behavior of the hot plate both in heating and cooling phases. The PID thermal control of the device is modeled by adding user defined functions. The results of numerical computation demonstrate that the use of cartridge heaters provides sufficient heat-up performance and the active liquid cooling in the cooling holes provides the required cool-down performance. However, a crucial technical issue is raised that the proposed design poses a large temperature non-uniformity in the steady heating phase and in the transient cooling phase. As a remedy, a new hot plate in which heat pipes are installed in the cooling holes is considered. The numerical results show that the installation of heat pipes could enhance the temperature uniformity both in the heating and cooling phases.

• 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 Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.513-520
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• 2011

The NIL processes have been studied to implement low cost, high throughput and high resolution application. A RNIL(roller NIL) is an alternative approach to flat nanoimprint lithography. RNIL process is necessary to transfer patterns on flexible substrates. Compared with flat NIL, RNIL has the advantages of better uniformity, less pressing force, and the ability to repeat the patterning process continuously on a large substrate. This paper studies the design, construction and verification of a thermal RNIL system. The proposed RNIL system can easily adopt the flat shaped hot plate which is one of the most important technologies for NIL. The NIL system can be used to transfer patterns from a flexible stamp to a flexible substrate, from a flexible stamp to a Si substrate, and from a roller stamp to a flexible substrate, etc. Patterning on flexible substrates is one of the key technologies to produce bendable displays, solar cells and other applications.