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Perfluoropolyether (PFPE) Intermediate Molds for High-Resolution Thermal Nanoimprint Lithography
Among soft lithography techniques, Thermal Nanoimprint Lithography (NIL) is a high-throughput and low-cost process that can be applied to a broad range of thermoplastic materials. By simply applying the appropriate pressure and temperature combination, it is possible to transfer a pattern from a mol...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6116295/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30103377 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano8080609 |
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author | Masciullo, Cecilia Sonato, Agnese Romanato, Filippo Cecchini, Marco |
author_facet | Masciullo, Cecilia Sonato, Agnese Romanato, Filippo Cecchini, Marco |
author_sort | Masciullo, Cecilia |
collection | PubMed |
description | Among soft lithography techniques, Thermal Nanoimprint Lithography (NIL) is a high-throughput and low-cost process that can be applied to a broad range of thermoplastic materials. By simply applying the appropriate pressure and temperature combination, it is possible to transfer a pattern from a mold surface to the chosen material. Usually, high-resolution and large-area NIL molds are difficult to fabricate and expensive. Furthermore, they are typically made of silicon or other hard materials such as nickel or quartz for preserving their functionality. Nonetheless, after a large number of imprinting cycles, they undergo degradation and become unusable. In this paper, we introduce and characterize an innovative two-step NIL process based on the use of a perfluoropolyether (PFPE) intermediate mold to replicate sub-100 nm features from a silicon mold to the final thermoplastic material. We compare PFPE elastomeric molds with molds made of the standard polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer, which demonstrates better resolution and fidelity of the replica process. By using PFPE intermediate molds, the nanostructured masters are preserved and the throughput of the process is significantly enhanced. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6116295 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-61162952018-08-31 Perfluoropolyether (PFPE) Intermediate Molds for High-Resolution Thermal Nanoimprint Lithography Masciullo, Cecilia Sonato, Agnese Romanato, Filippo Cecchini, Marco Nanomaterials (Basel) Article Among soft lithography techniques, Thermal Nanoimprint Lithography (NIL) is a high-throughput and low-cost process that can be applied to a broad range of thermoplastic materials. By simply applying the appropriate pressure and temperature combination, it is possible to transfer a pattern from a mold surface to the chosen material. Usually, high-resolution and large-area NIL molds are difficult to fabricate and expensive. Furthermore, they are typically made of silicon or other hard materials such as nickel or quartz for preserving their functionality. Nonetheless, after a large number of imprinting cycles, they undergo degradation and become unusable. In this paper, we introduce and characterize an innovative two-step NIL process based on the use of a perfluoropolyether (PFPE) intermediate mold to replicate sub-100 nm features from a silicon mold to the final thermoplastic material. We compare PFPE elastomeric molds with molds made of the standard polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer, which demonstrates better resolution and fidelity of the replica process. By using PFPE intermediate molds, the nanostructured masters are preserved and the throughput of the process is significantly enhanced. MDPI 2018-08-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6116295/ /pubmed/30103377 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano8080609 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Masciullo, Cecilia Sonato, Agnese Romanato, Filippo Cecchini, Marco Perfluoropolyether (PFPE) Intermediate Molds for High-Resolution Thermal Nanoimprint Lithography |
title | Perfluoropolyether (PFPE) Intermediate Molds for High-Resolution Thermal Nanoimprint Lithography |
title_full | Perfluoropolyether (PFPE) Intermediate Molds for High-Resolution Thermal Nanoimprint Lithography |
title_fullStr | Perfluoropolyether (PFPE) Intermediate Molds for High-Resolution Thermal Nanoimprint Lithography |
title_full_unstemmed | Perfluoropolyether (PFPE) Intermediate Molds for High-Resolution Thermal Nanoimprint Lithography |
title_short | Perfluoropolyether (PFPE) Intermediate Molds for High-Resolution Thermal Nanoimprint Lithography |
title_sort | perfluoropolyether (pfpe) intermediate molds for high-resolution thermal nanoimprint lithography |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6116295/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30103377 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano8080609 |
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