Fluorinated organic-inorganic hybrid mold as a new stamp for nanoimprint and soft lithography

Abstract

In this paper, we fabricated a fluorinated organic-inorganic hybrid mold using a nonhydrolytic sol-gel process which can produce a crack-free mold without leaving any trace of solvent. No special chemical treatment of a release layer is needed because the fluorinated hybrid mold has fluorine molecules in the backbone. The other advantages of the hybrid mold are thermal stability over 300 degrees C. The hybrid mold produced from UV nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) was used as a mold for the next UV-NIL and soft lithography without requiring use of an antisticking layer. Various nanometer scale patterns including sub-100 nm patterns could be obtained from the hybrid mold. Nanopatterning processes using this low-cost mold are useful because they preserve the expensive original master.