Soft thermal nanoimprint lithography

7^th Annual Congress on Materials Research and Technology

February 20-21, 2017 Berlin, Germany

Mark Schvartzman

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Material Sci Eng

Abstract :

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) can be performed using two types of resists. In the UV nanoimprint, a liquid UV curable resist film is embossed at the room temperature, and hardened by UV-crosslinking. Such resists can be imprinted either by rigid or soft (elastomeric molds). In thermal nanoimprint, a film of thermoplastic resist is embossed when heated above its glass transition temperature. This type of nanoimprint is not compatible with soft molds, whose relief features would deform while pressed against the highly viscous molten polymer. This limitation precludes many application of thermal NIL, such as ultra-high resolution nanopatterning of curved surfaces. In this work, we introduce a novel concept of hybrid Soft-Substrate-Rigid-Feature (SSRF) nano imprint mold, which is based on soft substrate with rigid relief features. The SSRF mold was fabricated by electron-beam lithography of Hydrogen Silsesquioxane (HSQ) on a sacrificial substrate, followed by transferring the obtained HSQ features to elastomeric PDMS substrate. Anti-adhesive coating, which is usually used for hard Si based molds, was successfully applied on SSRF mold, and was shown to be essential for robust demolding after the imprint. SSRF molds were used to imprint thin films of Polymethyl Benzacrylate � a thermal resist with the glass transition temperature around 60 oC. This is, for the best of our knowledge, the first time that a thermal NIL was done with soft elastomeric molds. Furthermore, to demonstrate the uniqueness of our approach, we thermally imprinted PBMA films applied on lenses. In summary, we demonstrate here a novel concept of facile and robust mold for thermal nanoimprint lithography, which will pave a way to the broad variety of applications impossible up today.

Biography :

Mark Schvartzman received his PhD in Columbia University, NY, and did hos postdoc training in Weizmann Institute, Rehovot , Israel, Since 2014 he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Engineering and in the Isle Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science & Technology that is part of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. He has over 10 years of research experience on nanoimprint lithography and nanostructured materials. Over the years, he has publications in various prestigious international journals including Science and PNAS, and presented my work at various national and international conferences. Since joining academia, he won research grants close to 1 Million USD over a short span of just 2 years. He is a reviewer for the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology since 2008 and affiliated with the Israel Vacuum Society since 2009.

Email: marksc@bgu.ac.il