Fabrication of flexible mold for hybrid nanoimprint-soft lithography

We fabricated molds consisting of features in rigid UV-cured resist on an elastic poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) support for hybrid nanoimprint-soft lithography. The molds were duplicated through coating and curing a UV-curable resist onto a poly(dimethyl glutarimide) (PMGI) sacrificial mold that was subsequently dissolved using an aqueous basic solution that did not swell the PDMS support. Three methods are developed to fabricate the PMGI sacrificial mold: direct imprint into it at >200 degrees C, imprint into another polymer layer at sub-100 degrees C and then RIE transfer the pattern into PMGI, and direct writing by e-beam lithography. Using the hybrid nanoimprint-soft lithography process, we demonstrated pattern replication with sub-10 nm features size. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.