UV curing Nanoimprint Lithography (UV-NIL) requires the use of UV-transparent molds presenting nanoscale features on their active face. Although the choice of the transparent material (0.25" thick fused silica) seems to be definitely adopted by the UV-NIL developers, several patterning approaches have been reported during the last years, still none of them has already reached a mass production level. In this paper, we report on alternative patterning techniques based on the use of a thin transparent films deposited on the fused silica thick template. We investigate the suitability of materials currently used in integrated circuits fabrication, i.e., silicon nitride, silicon and titanium nitrate. Patterning and transfer techniques of nanoscale features within the deposited thin films have been performed and characterized. The first molds obtained exhibit quite good specification at the range of 300 nm. Ongoing works aim to optimize these procedures and to evaluate their suitability for higher resolution range.
UV curing Nanoimprint Lithography (UV-NIL) is an emerging lithographic technique, seen as a potential candidate for
the 32nm node by the ITRS road map. As the stamp is in direct contact with the substrate, template flatness is a critical
issue in addition to standard optical lithography mask requirements (high-resolution, low defectivity, CD control...).
This is why we propose to study the impact of the template flatness on the reproduction quality and on the imprint
uniformity. After having studied the Residual Layer Thickness (RLT) uniformity intra-dies and compared it to different
stamps flatness, the impact of UV-NIL process optimisations, such as the substrate quality and filling times, on RLT
uniformity intra- and inter-dies were evaluated. We observed that a high stamp waviness is always transferred into the
resist, while a low stamp waviness (under a few hundreds of nanometers range) has no impact on the RLT uniformity.
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