Materials and methods for imprint lithography

Abstract

One embodiment of the present invention relates to an imprinting material for imprint lithography that includes the surfactant 3M™ Novec™ Fluorosurfactant FC-4432, and another embodiment of the present invention relates to a method for imprint lithography that uses the imprinting material.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] One or more embodiments of the present invention relate generally to imprint lithography. In particular, one or more embodiments of the present invention relate to materials and methods for imprint lithography. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] Micro-fabrication involves the fabrication of very small structures, for example, and without limitation, structures having features on the order of micro-meters or smaller. One area in which micro-fabrication has had a sizeable impact is in processing of integrated circuits. As the semiconductor processing industry continues to strive for larger production yields while increasing the circuits per unit area formed on a substrate, micro-fabrication becomes increasingly important since micro-fabrication provides greater process control while allowing a reduction in the minimum feature dimension of the structures formed. Other areas of development in which micro-fabrication have been employed include biot...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention provides a method of imprint lithography that reduces voids during imprinting and maintains the desired release and wetting properties of the imprint template. This is achieved by using a polymeric fluorinated surfactant in a solution containing imprinting material. The polymeric fluorinated surfactant coats the imprint template, allowing for efficient wetting with the imprint material and reducing distortions in the pattern recorded in the solidified imprint layer. A pre-treatment of the imprint template with the polymeric fluorinated surfactant can also be employed. The use of the polymeric fluorinated surfactant in the imprinting material also helps regenerate the surface energy of the imprint template during imprint.

Problems solved by technology

A priori release layers, however, typically have a limited operational life.

This can result in several hours of down-time for a given imprint template, thereby reducing throughput.

Additionally, the molecular structure of the a priori release layer may limit the minimization of the minimum feature dimension that is printed.

The BARC layer was used to prevent intermixing between the imprinting material and the transfer layer, which intermixing may be particularly problematic when using an imprinting material comprised of low viscosity acrylate components because such components have solvency toward many polymers.

Such intermixing may cause problems, such as, for example, and without limitation, distortion of features when the imprint template is separated from the substrate after exposure to polymerizing radiation.

In particular, this can be problematic when feature thicknesses are as small as 50 nm to 100 nm.

Despite the above-described successful imprinting, material voids were observed when we imprinted a high feature density imprint template using the above-described imprinting method.

Images