Enhanced uniformity and durability of antisticking layer in imprinting stamps

In the nanoimprint lithography (NIL) stamp, a fluorinated self-assembled monolayer (SAM) is used as an antisticking layer. The uniformity and durability of the antisticking layer should be improved for achieving an effective fabrication of imprinted devices. In order to achieve these goals, we manufactured a vaporized SAM coating system with tilt and rotation functions, and we uniformly formed the antisticking layer on the stamp surface. The antisticking layer was with the 0.5 nm uniformity and the almost the same thickness of coating and re-coating. Moreover, to enhance durability, we conducted the pre-treatment before SAM coating and post-treatment after SAM coating – plasma cleaning, re-coating, deionized (DI) water deposition and annealing. The content of fluorine increased with re-coating, we could infer that the density of the antisticking layer increased via re-coating. To inspect the lifetime of the SAM-coated stamp, we measured the stamp surface contact angle in every five thermal NIL and identified that the durability of antisticking layer was dramatically improved.