Fabrication of polymeric nanostructures: techniques and stability Issues

Imprint lithography has become a potential next generation lithography technique for the microelectronics industry. We have developed new imprint lithography techniques that fabricate three-dimensional polymeric nanostructures so that imprint lithography can create a larger impact in other areas of science and technology. We have also studied the stability of imprinted polymeric nanostructures and found that the stability is reduced significantly as the feature size decreases. The cause is probably the interplay between residual stress and viscosity of the polymer at the relaxation temperature and our preliminary results clamor for more studies in this area.