Temperature effects on formation of metallic patterns in direct nanoimprint technique—Molecular dynamics simulation and experiment

Temperature effects on the formation of metallic nano-scale patterns that are fabricated by direct nanoimprint technique were investigated both theoretically and experimentally in this paper. For the theoretical study, a three-dimensional molecular dynamics model that applied the Morse potential function was employed to simulate the relationship between the interatomic force between the Ni-mold and gold thin film during nanoimprint process under the variation of temperature. The simulation was used for examining the mechanics in the pattern-forming process and the results were used as a reference for preparing nanoimprint experiment. The direct nanoimprint experiment was operated at different temperatures, i.e. 298 K, 323 K, 373 K, 423 K, and 493 K, for the purpose of assessing the effects of temperature on the formation of nano-scale patterns. From the results of the molecular dynamics simulation and direct nanoimprint experiment, it was concluded that the higher the temperature is, the deeper and wider the patterns are produced. The results showed that the temperature of thin film and mold may be assigned to be 373–423 K in order to obtain good quality of pattern transfer of the mold.