Comparison of gas permeable mold with acryl substituents for silver nano-paste imprint patterning

Imprint lithography technique is widely used as microfabrication technology. Imprint lithography is a contact method utilizing a fine pattern mold and prints the pattern to materials. Due to benefits of high resolution and cost reduction, this technique is promising for the next generation fabrication technology. We have reported that imprint lithography enabled micro-scale silver patterning using silver nano-paste. One of the issues of silver nano-paste imprint is a pattern failure due to insufficient filling of silver nano-paste caused by outgas generation from silver nano-paste. A mold derived from cellulose derivatives which has a good gas permeability can remove outgas and reduces the pattern failure. In this study, we prepared three types of thermal cross-linking cellulose derivatives that have different acrylic substituents and compared imprint lithography performance of molds from those cellulose derivatives for silver nano-paste imprinting. One of the gas permeable molds enabled more times imprinting and the mold had better mold release property and flexibility compared to other gas permeable molds. We conclude that both of mold release property and flexibility of a gas permeable mold are required for good repeatability of silver nano-paste imprinting. [Display omitted] •Gas permeable mold from thermal cross-linked cellulose derivatives with acrylic substituents was demonstrated.•Gas permeable mold led to the well-patterned 2 μm lines for thermal imprint lithography.•Gas permeable mold indicates 5 times imprint times of the silver microscale patterning.