GOALI: Electrohydrodynamic Force Assisted Nanoimprint Lithography for Defect-Free Nanomanufacturing

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Cost-effective nanolithography technologies are increasingly needed for realizing scalable manufacturing of commercially-viable devices based on emerging nanostructures, such as nanoelectronic components in computer chips, nanoscale memory cells (or media) that can result in improved data storage capability, and photonic nanostructures for improving the power efficiency of solar cells. Recently, nanoimprint lithography has been adopted by the industry as an important candidate nanomanufacturing technology for patterning such nanostructures. Despite its advantages such as low processing cost, high patterning resolution, and high throughput, the current nanoimprinting systems suffer from nanoscale defects, which have seriously limited process yields and significantly hindered industrial applications. This Grant Opportunity for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) award will seek to establish new nanomanufacturing methods capable of reducing or eliminating such defects. The research topics span over multiple disciplines of science and engineering including nanomanufacturing, electrostatics, hydrodynamics, simulation, and process characterization. These disciplines will be integrated to provide interdisciplinary knowledge to a broad range of people including K-12 students and educators, undergraduates, graduates, and students from underrepresented groups. This project will also involve collaboration with industry to ensure the technologies developed are scalable and commercially relevant. Currently, nanoscale gas bubbles trapped in imprint resist films are one of the most serious defects that affect the yields of manufacturing-grade nanoimprint systems. The research team's preliminary study demonstrates that the formation of such nanoscale defects is mainly attributed to surface pinning of resist spreading edges at the nanostructures or contaminants on the mold-substrate interfaces. However, there is still a lack of effective methods to eliminate such detrimental pinning effects and resulting gas defects. In this project, the research team aims to close this knowledge gap by creating and investigating a new light-curable nanoimprint technology based on nanoscopic electrohydrodynamic effects, which is anticipated to improve resist filling characteristics, significantly reduce or eliminate nanoscale gas defects, and therefore greatly enhance the yields of imprinted nanostructures over large areas. In particular, they will construct molecular dynamics models for investigating the effects of electrohydrodynamic forces on the dynamic evolution of nanoscale gas defects; build an electrohydrodynamic force-assisted nanoimprint system for determining and testing defect-free nanomanufacturing mechanisms; and combine modeling and experimental data to refine the simulation models.