A UV-NIL resist developed for a transitional soft mold process and the subsequent dry etch transfer into hard materials

Overview & Synopsis

We designed a new UV nanoimprint resist adapted to the use of a transitional soft COP or COC mold to replicate or transfer submicro or nano features into hard materials such as silicon, silica or gallium arsenide. We have used this resist successfully to transfer submicro or nano features from a silicon mold into silicon, silica or gallium arsenide on small samples or full 4" wafers. This enables for instance the making of optical filters on transparent substrates on which direct stepper lithography can not be done easily. The knowledge of the resist content provides a good reliability of the process and enables adaptation of the resist to new applications (such as final optical index adjustment). Among currently investigatd and future works or those implying the use of the resist as an optical layer that will remain on the final device (as it is, or with optical index adaptation) and it's use for nanoscale metal deposition by lift-off process.