A new micro/nano-lithography based on contact transfer of thin film and mask embedded lithography

This paper presents a new nanoimprint method based on the Contact Transfer and Mask Embedded Lithography (CMEL) technique. In CMEL process, a thin metal film is deposited on the silicon mold treated with an anti-adhesion layer. The mold contacts with a liquid phase of PMMA layer on the silicon substrate by applying a uniform pressure on the both sides of the mold and the substrate. After removing the mold, the thin film is embedded onto the PMMA resist as an etching mask for the sub-sequential etching process. In the results of experiments, CMEL has demonstrated the linear grating and dot-array with the feature size around 200 to 500 nm successfully. Compared with other nanoimpint methods, CMEL is a "Green" nanoimprint technique because its process is simple and consumes no energy to assist the mold to form the nanostructures.