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

越来越需要具有成本效益的纳米光刻技术来实现基于新兴纳米结构的商业上可行的设备的可扩展制造，例如计算机芯片中的纳米电子组件、可以导致改进的数据存储能力的纳米级存储器单元（或介质）以及用于改进太阳能电池的功率效率的光子纳米结构。最近，纳米压印光刻已经被工业界采用作为用于图案化这种纳米结构的重要候选纳米制造技术。尽管其优点，如低加工成本，高图案分辨率，和高吞吐量，目前的纳米压印系统遭受纳米级缺陷，这严重限制了工艺产量和显着阻碍工业应用。这个学术联络与工业（GOALI）奖的赠款机会将寻求建立新的纳米制造方法，能够减少或消除这些缺陷。研究课题跨越科学和工程的多个学科，包括纳米制造，静电学，流体力学，模拟和过程表征。这些学科将被整合，为包括K-12学生和教育工作者，本科生，研究生和代表性不足群体的学生在内的广泛人群提供跨学科知识。该项目还将涉及与行业的合作，以确保开发的技术具有可扩展性和商业相关性。 目前，纳米级气泡是影响纳米压印系统成品率的最严重的缺陷之一。研究小组的初步研究表明，这种纳米级缺陷的形成主要归因于纳米结构处的抗蚀剂扩散边缘的表面钉扎或模具-衬底界面上的污染物。然而，仍然缺乏有效的方法来消除这种有害的钉扎效应和由此产生的气体缺陷。在这个项目中，研究小组的目标是通过创建和研究一种新的光固化纳米压印技术来缩小这一知识差距，该技术基于纳米级电流体动力学效应，预计将改善抗蚀剂填充特性，显着减少或消除纳米级气体缺陷，从而大大提高大面积压印纳米结构的产量。特别是，他们将构建分子动力学模型，用于研究电流体动力学对纳米级气体缺陷动态演化的影响;建立电流体动力学辅助纳米压印系统，用于确定和测试无缺陷纳米制造机制;并将联合收割机建模和实验数据相结合，以完善模拟模型。

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.