Step and Flash Imprint Lithography: An Efficient Nanoscale Printing Technology

The goal of the SFIL development program is to enable patterning of sub-100nm features at room temperature and with minimal applied pressure. We believe the use of low viscosity materials and photopolymerization chemistry will enable SFIL to achieve the throughput required for use in the microelectronics industry. Additionally, the rigid transparent imprint template used in SFIL enables a precision in overlay alignment that is difficult to achieve in other imprint schemes. Previous work demonstrated the ability to use SFIL to pattern over existing topography, to pattern on curved surfaces, and to produce working simple optical devices. Studies of defectivity have not revealed significant defect generation, and in fact have revealed no catastrophic defect propagation. Recent work has focused on improving etching processes used to amplify the aspect ratio of the polymer features. With this recent work we have demonstrated polymer-on-Si semi-dense lines smaller than 50nm made with the SFIL process.