Possible consequences of the production of small black holes at the LHC for different scenarios with large extra dimensions are investigated. The effects from black hole production on some standard jet observables are examined, concentrating on the reduction of the QCD cross section. It is found that black hole production of partons interacting on a short enough distance indeed seem to generate a drastic drop in the QCD cross section. However from an experimental point of view this will in most cases be camouflaged by energetic radiation from the black holes.

Nanoimprint lithography is an attractive technology for LSIs era below 40-nm critical dimension from the viewpoints of high-throughput and low-cost equipment. In order to avoid a pattern placement error due to thermal expansion in the conventional thermal imprint process, we attempted to replicate the mold pattern onto a liquid polymer, which was solidified using ultra-violet (UV) light irradiation at room temperature. The liquid polymer used here was supplied by TEIJIN SEIKI Co., and termed TSR-820. It was spin coated on slide glass to produce approximately 1.5-µm-thick polymer film. The thickness remained after UV exposure and rinsing in acetone was observed at the dose of 10 J/cm 2 and it saturated about a UV exposure dose of 100 J/cm 2 with an increase in the exposure dose. The mold fabricated of quartz plate was first pressed onto the polymer film at about 100 kg/cm 2 and then the UV light was irradiated using an imprint apparatus developed for this work. After releasing the mold from the film, the substrate was rinsed in acetone to remove the residual liquid polymer. Eventually the minimum feature size of 100-nm line and 300-nm space pattern was successfully replicated in the polymer with good fidelity.

A compact nanoimprint lithography ͑NIL͒ system using the driving power of a stepping motor has been developed. Compared to a conventional NIL system with a hydraulic press, there are some additional features of the NIL system such as compactness and low cost. We propose the use of spin on glass ͑SOG͒ instead of PMMA to avoid thermal expansion and demonstrate SOG patterns with 200 nm linewidths at room temperature replications using the NIL system. The SOG patterns were transferred to gold metal using liftoff and to a silicon substrate by reactive ion etching.

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In this study we investigated the effects of ambient gas on the characteristics of UV-curable resin in UV nanoimprint process by comparing the pattern transfer fidelity and residual layer thicknesses of the samples carried out in air and pentafluoropropane gas. We found that the resin pattern shrinkage induced by UV exposure was markedly affected by the ambient gas environment. The pattern shrinkage reached 22% in pentafluoropropane, while it reached only 3% in air. Also, the effects of pentafluoropropane on residual layer thickness were investigated. It was found that the residual layer using pentafluoropropane was much thinner than could be expected from the shrinkage induced by pentafluoropropane alone. We believe that the thinning of the residual layer is caused not only by shrinkage, but also by a decrease in the viscosity of UV-curable resin.

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