AutoSCIL 200mm tooling in production, x-ray optics, and cell growth templates

Nanoscale spatial limitations of large-area substrate conformal imprint lithography

“…A single composite rubber stamp containing sub-50 nm lines was used to make over 700 imprints on 200 mm wafers in the sol-gel resist, with subsequent analysis confirming that patterns retained their shape to within +/−1 nm in width [42]. We did not observe any significant variation in the replicated patterns (height, width, shape) over the course of this experiment, confirming the durability of the inexpensive rubber stamp.…”

X-ray verification of sol-gel resist shrinkage in substrate-conformal imprint lithography for a replicated blazed reflection grating

“…However, in an effort to produce imprints that emulate the UV-NIL replica described by Miles, et al [2], which was fabricated using the silicon master as a direct stamp, this process was modified to realize a stamp with an inverted topography, as in Fig. 3(b), so as to allow the production of imprints with sharp apexes and flat portions at the bottom of each groove [12]. The variety of modified PDMS used for this study was X-PDMS version 3, (Philips SCIL Nanoimprint Solutions), which was dispensed over the surface of the MVD-treated silicon master and then solidified through two rounds of spin-coating and baking steps using primary and accompanying components of the material.…”

“…An alternative NIL technique for the mass production of x-ray reflection gratings is substrateconformal imprint lithography (SCIL) [11][12][13]. Unlike standard NIL that uses a rigid stamp for direct imprinting, SCIL centers on the use of a low-cost, flexible stamp molded from a rigid master template.…”

“…Packaged equipment that automates spin-coating and this pneumatic-based SCIL wafer-scale imprint method for high-volume replication has been developed by Philips SCIL Nanoimprint Solutions [14]. This production platform, known as A SCIL, was first applied to x-ray reflection grating technology for the grating spectrometer on board the Water Recovery X-ray Rocket [12,15], which utilized 26 nickel-coated replicas of a 110 cm 2 master grating fabricated through crystallographic etching in a manner similar to the processing described by Miles, et al [2].…”

“…Using the A SCIL production platform, a single stamp is capable of producing 700 imprints in sol-gel resist at a rate of 60, 150-mm-diameter wafers per hour, without pattern degradation [11][12][13]. While this makes SCIL an attractive method for mass producing x-ray reflection gratings, the thermally-induced densification of the silica sol-gel network causes resist shrinkage similar in effect to the UV-curing of organic resists in UV-NIL [8,17,18].…”