Abstract
Abstract A new type of a specifically tailored resist for Soft Nanoimprint Lithography (Soft UV-NIL) namely mr-NIL213FC has been developed. It aims for a significant improvement of its etch-resistance with regard to underlying oxide substrates such as glass. This work demonstrates the first study of its imprint performance and etching behavior against fused silica wafers. First of all, the resist shows full compatibility with automated Soft UV-NIL using PDMS-based soft stamps and at ambient (oxygen containing) conditions for both step-and-repeat and full-wafer approaches. Moreover, the selectivity of the resist to the underlying fused silica substrate, in a high power and high etch rate condition, has reached to over 0.6, which is a significant step-up among most products in this context. The improved resistance of the resist facilitates direct etching processes for high resolution and high structure fidelity.
Highlights
The fused silica substrate is coated with hexamethyldisilazane (HMDS) as adhesion promotor, which is fully compatible with the new resist mr-NIL213FC
The HMDS is brought onto the surface of the fused silica substrate by a nitrogen (N2) air flow and is evaporated in an evacuated chamber at a temperature of 95 °C
As soon as the substrate has cooled down, it is imprinted by the center-to-edge scheme at ambient atmosphere at a gentle imprint pressure of 0.5 kPa
Summary
Nanostructures have been playing an essential role in the past decades ranging from single elements to system miniaturizations. Resist is expected to possess a high resistance to the exposure of plasma during the pattern transfer, which will lead to a high selectivity to the material removal of the underlying substrate Under these circumstances, a variety of resist materials has been invented to fit into diverse and complex imprint setups and schemes. The complex components of the resist can diffuse into the PDMS, i.e. smaller molecules of resist can fill up the relatively large space due to the relatively low polymer network density of PDMS This increases the risk that the resist can stick to the surface of soft mold, which causes non-removable contamination. There have been diverse tailored resists existing on the market to address these issues and overcome these challenges when PDMS-based soft molds are in use at ambient atmosphere, such as the well acknowledged mr-NIL210 series [12]. A step further, a first study and experimental investigation of etching behavior of the new resist with respect to underlying fused silica substrates in CHF3 and/or CF4 chemistry is carried out
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