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A simple and versatile method for fabricating nanopatterns by a lift-off procedure is demonstrated. The technique involves the use of molecular transfer lithography based on water-soluble templates to form a nanopatterned UV-curable material on a PMGI layer, which serves as an underlying resin suitable for lift-off processes. This bi-layer procedure is used for the fabrication of nickel patterns, which are subsequently used as a hard mask for plasma etch processing. Using this procedure, a two-dimensional TiO2 photonic crystal layer with a 450 nm lattice constant is fabricated on Y3Al5O12:Ce3+ (YAG:Ce) yellow ceramic plate phosphor to enhance its forward emission. The yellow emission in the forward direction is improved by a factor of 3.5 compared to that of a conventional non-scattering YAG:Ce phosphor plate excited by a blue LED. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A thermal system is developed to rapidly characterize the linewidth sensitivity of advanced resists to process temperature variations in the photolithographic manufacturing sequence. This thermal array consists of a 7×7 grid of individually programmable heating zones distributed within a thermal cycling apparatus. It is used to improve the quality and quantity of data for determining the optimal thermal conditions by effectively producing equivalent operating conditions besides the spatially controlled temperature. The system is demonstrated for the optimization of the post-apply and post-exposure thermal-processing conditions for chemically amplified photoresists used in the fabrication of quartz photomasks . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]