Method and process for metallic stamp replication for large area nanopatterns

Abstract

A method and process for obtaining a metal stamp from an intermediate polymer stamp comprising the steps of providing a first print layer on top of a first polymer layer, imprinting structures to obtain an intermediate stamp. A conductive layer is provided on top of the structures to obtain a seed layer if the imprinted polymer is a non-conductive, plating metal on top of the intermediate polymer stamp to obtain a metal stamp then separating the intermediate stamp from the metal stamp. This invention demonstrates stamp replication in high throughput and at low cost.

Description

FIELD OF INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to replication of metal stamps assisted by imprinting lithography technology using an intermediate polymer stamp (IPS) consisting of micro- and nano-structures.BACKGROUND OF PRIOR ART[0002]The invention of the imprint lithography by Kondo at NTT, a low-cost and high throughput manufacturing process, (Kondo, M., Patent no. JP 22389, 1979) has been widely adopted in many applications, such as photonics, magnetic data storage, display, nano-micro-electromechanical system (NEMSs, MEMSs), nano-micro-electronics, biotech and chemical synthesis. However, one of the key issues in the invented technique is to fabricate the imprint stamp with Nanopatterns in high resolution, large area, at a low cost, and it is simultaneously capable of pattering arbitrary nanostructures over a large area with long-range order at a low cost (J. J. Wang, et al. J. lightwave technol., vol. 23, pp. 474-485, 2005; B. Heidari, et al, J. Vac. Sci. Technol., B 17...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0003]It has been found by the inventors that replicating a maximum amount of nickel stamps based on one Electron Beam Lithography (EBL)-resist master is the key issue to reduce the manufacturing cost of Nano-Imprint Lithography (NIL) and thereby to further promote application of NIL technology in the industry. Nowadays, electroforming via a familiar process facilitated more copies of the Ni-stamp, which have identical structures to that of the original EBL-master. This means that one EBL-master only provides one “father” Ni-stamp with inverse features via electroforming. On the other hand, by performing additional electroforming based on a “father” stamp, a “mother” stamp with identical structures to the EBL-master was obtained. Incidentally, we found that only 10 mother stamps could be produced by this manner due to the more and more severe demoulding damages between father and mother stamps at duration of separation, especially as densely spaced small features are patterned with large a area and high aspect ratio. According to this invention we introduced a novel method to copy large quantities of nickel stamps from the original master via combined NIL and electroforming process. If patterns identical to those of the original stamp were required, then a one-step NIL was performed, otherwise a two-step NIL process will provide the reversed nanostructures on a nickel stamp after electroforming, which is probably more promising considering the fact that patterns inverse to those of the original mold are not readily obtained.

Problems solved by technology

Incidentally, we found that only 10 mother stamps could be produced by this manner due to the more and more severe demoulding damages between father and mother stamps at duration of separation, especially as densely spaced small features are patterned with large a area and high aspect ratio.

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