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  1. Atomic force microscope
  2. Atomic nanoscope
  3. Atom probe
  4. Ballistic conduction
  5. Bingel reaction
  6. Biomimetic
  7. Bio-nano generator
  8. Bionanotechnology
  9. Break junction
  10. Brownian motor
  11. Bulk micromachining
  12. Cantilever
  13. Carbon nanotube
  14. Carbyne
  15. CeNTech
  16. Chemical Compound Microarray
  17. Cluster
  18. Colloid
  19. Comb drive
  20. Computronium
  21. Coulomb blockade
  22. Diamondoids
  23. Dielectrophoresis
  24. Dip Pen Nanolithography
  25. DNA machine
  26. Ecophagy
  27. Electrochemical scanning tunneling microscope
  28. Electron beam lithography
  29. Electrospinning
  30. Engines of Creation
  31. Exponential assembly
  32. Femtotechnology
  33. Fermi point
  34. Fluctuation dissipation theorem
  35. Fluorescence interference contrast microscopy
  36. Fullerene
  37. Fungimol
  38. Gas cluster ion beam
  39. Grey goo
  40. Hacking Matter
  41. History of nanotechnology
  42. Hydrogen microsensor
  43. Inorganic nanotube
  44. Ion-beam sculpting
  45. Kelvin probe force microscope
  46. Lab-on-a-chip
  47. Langmuir-Blodgett film
  48. LifeChips
  49. List of nanoengineering topics
  50. List of nanotechnology applications
  51. List of nanotechnology topics
  52. Lotus effect
  53. Magnetic force microscope
  54. Magnetic resonance force microscopy
  55. Mechanochemistry
  56. Mechanosynthesis
  57. MEMS thermal actuator
  58. Mesotechnology
  59. Micro Contact Printing
  60. Microelectromechanical systems
  61. Microfluidics
  62. Micromachinery
  63. Molecular assembler
  64. Molecular engineering
  65. Molecular logic gate
  66. Molecular manufacturing
  67. Molecular motors
  68. Molecular recognition
  69. Molecule
  70. Nano-abacus
  71. Nanoart
  72. Nanobiotechnology
  73. Nanocar
  74. Nanochemistry
  75. Nanocomputer
  76. Nanocrystal
  77. Nanocrystalline silicon
  78. Nanocrystal solar cell
  79. Nanoelectrochemistry
  80. Nanoelectrode
  81. Nanoelectromechanical systems
  82. Nanoelectronics
  83. Nano-emissive display
  84. Nanoengineering
  85. Nanoethics
  86. Nanofactory
  87. Nanoimprint lithography
  88. Nanoionics
  89. Nanolithography
  90. Nanomanufacturing
  91. Nanomaterial based catalyst
  92. Nanomedicine
  93. Nanomorph
  94. Nanomotor
  95. Nano-optics
  96. Nanoparticle
  97. Nanoparticle tracking analysis
  98. Nanophotonics
  99. Nanopore
  100. Nanoprobe
  101. Nanoring
  102. Nanorobot
  103. Nanorod
  104. Nanoscale
  105. Nano-Science Center
  106. Nanosensor
  107. Nanoshell
  108. Nanosight
  109. Nanosocialism
  110. Nanostructure
  111. Nanotechnology
  112. Nanotechnology education
  113. Nanotechnology in fiction
  114. Nanotoxicity
  115. Nanotube
  116. Nanovid microscopy
  117. Nanowire
  118. National Nanotechnology Initiative
  119. Neowater
  120. Niemeyer-Dolan technique
  121. Ormosil
  122. Photolithography
  123. Picotechnology
  124. Programmable matter
  125. Quantum dot
  126. Quantum heterostructure
  127. Quantum point contact
  128. Quantum solvent
  129. Quantum well
  130. Quantum wire
  131. Richard Feynman
  132. Royal Society's nanotech report
  133. Scanning gate microscopy
  134. Scanning probe lithography
  135. Scanning probe microscopy
  136. Scanning tunneling microscope
  137. Scanning voltage microscopy
  138. Self-assembled monolayer
  139. Self-assembly
  140. Self reconfigurable
  141. Self-Reconfiguring Modular Robotics
  142. Self-replication
  143. Smart dust
  144. Smart material
  145. Soft lithography
  146. Spent nuclear fuel
  147. Spin polarized scanning tunneling microscopy
  148. Stone Wales defect
  149. Supramolecular assembly
  150. Supramolecular chemistry
  151. Supramolecular electronics
  152. Surface micromachining
  153. Surface plasmon resonance
  154. Synthetic molecular motors
  155. Synthetic setae
  156. Tapping AFM
  157. There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom
  158. Transfersome
  159. Utility fog

 



NANOTECHNOLOGY
This article is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanoimprint_lithography

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License 

Nanoimprint Lithography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Nanoimprint lithography)

Nanoimprint lithography is a novel method of fabricating nanometer scale patterns. It is a simple process with low cost, high throughput and high resolution. It creates patterns by mechanical deformation of imprint resist and subsequent processes. The imprint resist is typically a monomer or polymer formulation that is cured by heat or UV light during the imprinting. Adhesion between the resist and the template is controlled to allow proper release.

History

Nanoimprint lithography[1] was first invented by Prof. Stephen Chou and his students. Soon after its invention, a lot of researchers have developed many different variations and implementations. At this point, nanoimprint lithography has been added to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) for the 32 nm node.

Process

There are many different types of Nanoimprint Lithography, but two of them are most important: Thermoplastic Nanoimprint lithography and Photo Nanoimprint Lithography.

Thermoplastic Nanoimprint Lithography

Thermoplastic Nanoimprint lithography (T-NIL) is the earliest nanoimprint lithography developed by Professor Stephen Y. Chou's group. In a standard T-NIL process, a thin layer of imprint resist (thermoplastic polymer) is spin coated onto the sample substrate. Then the mold, which has predefined topological patterns, is brought into contact with the sample and they are pressed together under certain pressure. When heated up above the glass transition temperature of the polymer, the pattern on the mold is pressed into the melt polymer film. After being cooled down, the mold is separated from the sample and the pattern resist is left on the substrate. A pattern transfer process (Reactive Ion Etching, normally) can be used to transfer the pattern in the resist to the underneath substrate.

Photo Nanoimprint Lithography

In Photo Nanoimprint Lithography (P-NIL), a photo(UV) curable liquid resist is applied to the sample substrate and the mold is normally made of transparent material like fused silica. After the mold and the substrate are pressed together, the resist is cured in UV light and becomes solid. After mold separation, a similar pattern transfer process can be used to transfer the pattern in resist onto the underneath material.

Schemes

Full Wafer Nanoimprint

In a full wafer nanoimprint scheme, all the patterns are contained in a single nanoimprint field and will be transferred in a single imprint step. This allows a high throughput and uniformity. An at least 8" diameter full-wafer nanoimprint with high fidelity is possible.

Step and Repeat Nanoimprint

Nanoimprint can be performed in a way similar to the step and repeat optical lithography. The imprint field (die) is typically much smaller than the full wafer nanoimprint field. The die is repeatedly imprinted to the substrate with certain step size. This scheme is good for nanoimprint mold creation. It is currently limited by the throughput, alignment and street width issues. One example of such scheme is called Step and Flash Imprint Lithography (SFIL), developed by Prof. Grant Willson’s group at the University of Texas at Austin.

Applications

Nanoimprint lithography has been used to fabricate device for electrical, optical, photonic and biological applications. For electronics devices, NIL has been used to fabricate MOSFET, O-TFT, single electron memory. For optics and photonics, intensive study has been conducted in fabrication of subwavelength resonant grating filter, polarizers, waveplate, anti-reflective structures, integrated photonics circuit and plasmontic devices by NIL. sub-10 nm nanofluidic channels had been fabricated using NIL and used in DNA strenching experiment. Currently, NIL is used to shrink the size of biomolecular sorting device an order of magnitude smaller and more efficient.

Key Benefits

A key benefit of nanoimprint lithography is its sheer simplicity. There is no need for complex optics or high-energy radiation sources. There is no need for finely tailored photoresists designed for both resolution and sensitivity at a given wavelength. The simplified requirements of the technology also lead to its low cost, another key benefit. Since large areas can be imprinted in one step, this is also a high-throughput technique.

Key Concerns

The key concerns for nanoimprint lithography are overlay, defects, and template patterning. Due to the direct contact involved, the potential for error in overlay and potential for defects are magnified compared to cases where the image is projected from a distance. These can be mitigated with the use of effective step-and-imprint and template cleaning strategies, respectively. The current overlay 3 sigma capability is 10 nm (source). As with immersion lithography, defect control is expected to improve as the technology matures. The template patterning can currently be performed by electron beam lithography; however at the smallest resolution, the throughput is very slow. As a result, optical patterning tools will be more helpful if they have sufficient resolution. Optical patterning tools are already in use for the manufacturing of photomasks. Contact lithography or interference lithography may also be used. In the end, resolution will not be a critical factor in template generation, as a fine-resolution template (e.g., dense collection of trenches) can be formed using multiple coarse-resolution templates (e.g. a set of loosely spaced protrusions). This would lighten the burden of template generation and inspection.

Removal of Residual Layers

A key characteristic of nanoimprint lithography is the residual layer following the imprint process. It is preferable to have thick enough residual layers to support alignment and throughput and low defects[2]. However, this renders the nanoimprint lithography step less critical for critical dimension (CD) control than the etch step used to remove the residual layer. Hence, it is important to consider the residual layer removal an integrated part of the overall nanoimprint patterning process. In a sense, the residual layer etch is similar to the develop process in conventional lithography. It has been proposed to combine contact lithography and nanoimprint lithography techniques in one step in order to eliminate the residual layer[3].

 

3D-patterning

A unique benefit of nanoimprint lithography is the ability to pattern 3D structures, such as damascene interconnects and T-gates, in fewer steps than required for conventional lithography. This is achieved by building the T-shape into the protrusion on the template[4].

The future of nanoimprint

Nanoimprint lithography is a simple pattern transfer process that is neither limited by diffraction nor scattering effects nor secondary electrons, and does not require any sophisticated radiation chemistry. It is also a potentially simple and inexpensive technique. However, a lingering barrier to nanometer-scale patterning is the current reliance on other lithography techniques to generate the template. It is possible that self-assembled structures will provide the ultimate solution for templates of periodic patterns at scales of 10 nm and less[5]. It is also possible to resolve the template generation issue by using a programmable template [6] in a scheme based on double patterning.

References

  1. S.Y. Chou et. al., Science 272, 85 (1996)
  2. S.V. Sreenivasan et. al., Semiconductor Fabtech, 25th edition, pp.107-113 (2005).
  3. X. Cheng and L. J. Guo, Microelectronic Eng. vol. 71, pp. 277-282 (2004).
  4. M. Li et. al., Appl. Phys. Lett. vol. 78, pp. 3322-3324 (2001).
  5. E. V. Shevchenko et. al., Nature 439, pp. 55-59 (2006).
  6. U. S. Patent 7,128,559.

External links

  • Nanonex
  • Obducat
  • Molecular Imprints
  • Commercialization of Nano Imprint Lithography (NIL)
  • NIL Technology
  • EV Group Inc.
  • Suss MicroTec
  • Nanoimprint Lithography
  • Imprint technology review site (requires subscription)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanoimprint_Lithography"