A Novel Contact Imprinting Lithography for Nano-Patterning and Nano-Fabrication

This paper reports a simple but useful contact printing method for micro-and nano-patterning and fabrication. In this method, a silicon mold with some micro/nano-features is first coated with an anti-adhesion layer and then a metal layer, while the substrate is spin-coated with a thin polymer layer. Upon compressing the mold against the mold, the convex features of the mold will emboss into the polymer layer, and the patterned metal film is transferred into the polymer layer. The transferred metal pattern then serves as an etching mask for subsequent O₂ plasma etching of polymer layer to complete the patterning process. This contact-transferred and mask-embedded lithography (CMEL) process offers many advantages.