Nanoimprint Lithography
Paul Scherrer Institut, Laboratory for Micro- and Nanotechnology, ODRA/103, 5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland.
NanoImprint Lithography (henceforth NIL) is a high throughput, high-resolution parallel patterning method in which a surface pattern of a stamp is replicated into a material by mechanical contact and 3D material displacement. This can be done by shaping a liquid followed by a curing process for hardening, by variation of the thermomechanical properties of a film by heating and cooling, or by any other kind of shaping process using the difference in hardness of a mould and a mouldable material. The local thickness contrast of the resulting thin moulded film can be used as a means to pattern an underlying substrate on wafer level by standard pattern transfer methods, but also directly in applications where a bulk modified functional layer is needed. Therefore it is mainly aimed toward fields in which electron beam and high-end photolithography are costly and do not provide sufficient resolution at reasonable throughput. NIL is used or is currently tested for high volume manufacturing in different applications, such as semiconductor integrated circuit chips bit patterned media, patterns sapphire substrates, wire grid polarizers, photonic devices, and will play a key role in future biochips.
