Eliminating the undercut phenomenon in interference lithography for the fabrication of nano-imprint lithography stamp

Abstract

We show an easy method to eliminate the undercut profile of photoresist by fabricating periodic nano-patterns on a substrate using interference lithography. An undercut phenomenon occurs frequently on the sidewall of photoresist patterns because of the 3-dimensional intensity distribution generated when two beams are merged to make an interferogram. This is mainly caused by the vertical interference between the incident beam and the one reflected from the surface of a substrate, and bottom-anti-reflection-coating (BARC) material is usually used to prevent beams from being reflected onto the substrate. We propose a simple post-process which helps researchers fabricate well-defined patterns without using BARC material. We developed this process to fabricate stamps for nano-imprint lithography at low cost, and show the results of our nano-imprint process which transfers patterns on a stamp directly through thermal resist. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.