Mechanistic study of lift-off for continuous metal layers after T-NIL
✍ Scribed by Andre Mayer; Saskia Möllenbeck; Khalid Dhima; Si Wang; Hella-Christin Scheer
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2011
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 445 KB
- Volume
- 88
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0167-9317
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Thermal nanoimprint and sputtering, two low-cost techniques, are combined to define metallic patterns by means of lift-off. The typically positive sidewall angle of imprinted structures in combination with sputtering for layer deposition leads to a continuous metal layer which has to be ruptured at a definite position, at the best along the respective pattern base, so that lift-off can work. This issue is investigated taking polystyrene (PS) as the imprint polymer and toluene as the lift-off solvent. The impact of the geometry factors and the impact of soaking and the power of ultrasonic agitation are addressed both experimentally and analytically to derive the conditions for the successful lift-off of 250 nm wide lines over large areas.