More strictly speaking, UV-NIL offers a higher throughput than T-NIL since there is no need to elevate temperature and pressure in the process of UV-NIL. Both T-NIL and UV-NIL have the advantages of low cost, high throughput, and high resolution. As the pre-polymer cross-links, nanopatterns corresponding to the mold are formed on the polymer surface. Contrary to the T-NIL process, the UV-NIL process involves imprinting onto a layer of liquid photosensitive pre-polymer and using UV light to polymerize the resist. The imprint mechanism of UV-NIL is similar to the T-NIL process. As the polymer solidifies, the mold can be separated from the polymer, leaving the imprinted nanopatterns on the polymer surface. The external pressure must be preserved until the polymer is cooled down below T g and fully solidified. In a typical T-NIL demonstration, a hard mold carrying surface relief patterns is pressed into a softened or melted polymer layer, which is heated to above its glass transition temperature (T g). In terms of resist curing mode, there are two fundamental types of NIL: thermal NIL (T-NIL) and ultraviolet NIL (UV-NIL). Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) was first introduced in 1995 and has received significant development over the last two decades. In this paper, nanostructures were successfully replicated onto polymer sheets with the scale of 4-inch diameter within 5 min.Īmong all the existing methods, nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is one of the most promising ways to easily and reliably fabricate micro/nanostructures on polymer sheets with the advantage of low cost, high throughput, and high resolution. Once the external alternating magnetic field was cut off, the system would cool down fast owe to the small thermal capacity of the nickel mold thus, providing a high heating and cooling rate for the thermal nanoimprint process. By applying an external high-frequency alternating magnetic field, heat was generated by the eddy currents and magnetic hysteresis losses of the ferromagnetic nickel mold at high speed. In this study, we developed an induction heating apparatus for the thermal imprint with a mold made of ferromagnetic material, nickel. However, a typical thermal nanoimprint process usually takes tens of minutes due to the relatively low heating and cooling rate in the thermal imprint cycle.
Thermal nanoimprint lithography is playing a vital role in fabricating micro/nanostructures on polymer materials by the advantages of low cost, high throughput, and high resolution.
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