Step and flash imprint lithography: materials and process development

Step and flash imprint lithography (SFIL) is a high resolution, low cost patterning technique developed at The University of Texas at Austin. Envisioned as an alternative to conventional photolithographic techniques currently used to pattern semiconductor substrates, SFIL utilizes photocurable monomers in a micromolding process to replicate features etched into a transparent template. The elimination of expensive projection optics and sources required for photolithography offers tremendous potential cost savings. This dissertation presents an overview of the SFIL process and provides a description of each process step. Particular attention is paid to development of SFIL compatible etch processes as well as to the effects of polymerization induced densification on feature profile. Modeling of polymerization induced feature shrinkage and simulation of line profiles during etch processing are also presented.