PROCEEDINGS ARTICLE | April 4, 2011
Proc. SPIE. 7970, Alternative Lithographic Technologies III
KEYWORDS: Lithography, Optical lithography, Glasses, Interfaces, Silicon, Nanoimprint lithography, Head-mounted displays, Fluorine, Adhesives, Information operations
One of the major concerns with nanoimprint lithography is defecivity. One source of process specific defects is
associated with template separation failure. The addition of fluorinated surfactants to the imprint resist is an effective
way to improve separation and template lifetime. This study focuses on the development of new reactive fluorinated
additives, which function as surfactants and also have the ability to chemically modify the template surface during the
imprint process and thereby sustain a low surface energy release layer on the template. Material screening indicated that
the silazane functional group is well suited for this role. The new reactive surfactant, di-(3,3,4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7,8,8,8-
tridecafluorooctyl)silazane (F-silazane) was synthesized and tested for this purpose. The material has sufficient
reactivity to functionalize the template surface and acceptable stability (and thus shelf-life) in the imprint formulation.
Addition of F-Silazane to a standard imprint resist formulation significantly improved template release performance and
allowed for significantly longer continuous imprinting than the control formulation. A multiple-imprint study using an
Imprio® 100 tool confirmed the effectiveness of this new additive.
