One micron precision optically aligned method for hot-embossing and nanoimprinting

This paper reports an optically aligned hot-embossing and imprinting method for biomedical, microfluidic, and microoptical sensors. Hot-embossing technology is a low cost, flexible fabrication method, which has demonstrated high aspect ratio polymer microstructures as well as nanoimprinting patterns. It uses polymer substrates to imprint a pattern created on a master stamp. This allows the stamp to produce many fully patterned substrates for a wide range of materials and short production cycle times, and is therefore suited for applications from rapid prototyping to high volume production. The typical misalignment for mechanical alignment in hot-embossing is in the range of ±50 μm. By contrast, optical alignment accuracy can be achieved within 1 μm. This paper shows the principal equipment designs for optical alignment and hot-embossing process on silicon and quartz substrates. Alignment was performed on modified EVG620.