Nanoimprint Lithography -A Next Generation High Volume Lithography Technique

Nanoimprint Lithography has been demon-strated to be one of the most promising next genera-tion techniques for large-area structure replicationin the nanometer scale. This fast and low costmethod becomes an increasingly important instru-ment for fabrication of biochemistry,m-fluidic, m-TAS and telecommunication devices, as well as for awide variety of fields in the nm range, like biomedical,nano-fluidics,nano-optical applications, datastorage, etc.Due to the restrictions on wavelength and theenormous development works, linked to high pro-cess and equipment costs on standard lithographysystems, nanoimprint lithography might become areal competitive method in mainstream IC industry.There are no physical limitations encountered withimprinting techniques for much smaller replicatedstructures, down to the sub-10nm range [1]. Amongseveral Nanoimprint lithography techniques resultsof two promising methods, hot embossing lithogra-phy (HEL) and UV-nanoimprinting (UV-NIL) will bepresented. Both techniques allow rapid prototypingas well as high volume production of fully patternedsubstrates for a wide range of materials.This paper will present results on HE and UV-NIL, among them full wafer imprints up to 200mmwith high-resolution patterns down to nm range.