AVS 53rd International Symposium
    Nanometer-scale Science and Technology Thursday Sessions
       Session NS-ThP

Paper NS-ThP17
Nanoimprint Mold Repair by Focused-Ion-Beam Etching and Deposition

Thursday, November 16, 2006, 5:30 pm, Room 3rd Floor Lobby

Session: Nanoscale Science and Technology Poster Session
Presenter: M. Okada, University of Hyogo, Japan
Authors: M. Okada, University of Hyogo, Japan
K. Nakamatsu, University of Hyogo, Japan
S. Matsui, University of Hyogo, Japan
Correspondent: Click to Email
Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) in recent years is beginning to attract much attention from many industrial fields because of the advantages to provide various nanostructure devices with a high-throughput and low cost. In particular, mold is the key element in imprinting because the mold patterns transferred directly in replication materials. Therefore, repair techniques are required for the NIL mold. However, there are only a few papers reporting on the repairing of the NIL mold. In this paper, we demonstrate repair of a NIL mold with defects of protrusions and hollows by focused-ion-beam (FIB) technology. A beneficial advantage in use of FIB technology is that mask repair can be achieved with high-resolution because of the fine diameter of FIB of 5 nm. We performed repairing of a defective NIL mold using a commercial FIB apparatus with Ga+ ion-beam operating at 30 kV. Defects of protrusions contained in NIL mold were successfully repaired by FIB etching. Hollow defects of NIL mold were also repaired by FIB chemical vapor deposition (CVD) using C14H10 gas as a precursor. Diamond-like carbon thin layer deposited by FIB-CVD plugged the hollow defects. The mold patterns repaired by FIB etching and CVD were successfully imprinted in PMMA resin on a Si substrate, and then the PMMA imprinted patterns were transferred into Si substrate by CF4 reactive-ion-etching while the patterns were used as the etching mask. The results of repairing a defective NIL mold, and replicated patterns imprinted using the repaired mold will be presented at the conference.