Comparison of monomer and polymer resists in thermal nanoimprint lithography.

In this article, the authors compare a polymer resist to a thermally curable monomer resist in a full 8 in. wafer thermal nanoimprint lithography process. Using exactly the same imprinting conditions, the authors compare the printing quality and investigate the resist distribution through large area gratings (6×6 mm²) with various densities. It is shown that a liquid monomer solution greatly enhance the printing uniformity because of a much wider resist redistribution and flow during the process. Redistribution of the monomer resist is observed over an entire grating, while it is observed only over a few periods of a grating for the polymer in the same conditions. Furthermore, a low molecular weight resist allows reducing the imprinting force as well as the total cycle time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]