Defined area polymer working stamp manufacture for S&R UV-NIL by direct laser writing

UV-Nanoimprint Lithography (UV-NIL) is known to be a potentially cost-effective technique for the transfer of nanostructures from a stamp into a UV curing polymer [1]. However, fabricating a quartz stamp containing the desired nanostructures by e.g. Electron Beam Lithography and dry etching is a time consuming and therefore costly task. A faster and cheaper way to produce a UV-NIL stamp is molding a polymer working stamp from a master structure using the UV curable hybrid polymer OrmoStamp®. At the same time, fabricating working stamps with a defined area (as needed e.g. for a seamless step & repeat process) requires additional process steps. One possible way to fabricate defined OrmoStamp® mesa structures is the exposure through a chrome mask [2]. The use of a maskless lithography techniq ue like Direct Laser Writing (DLW), as proposed in this work, could facilitate the process significantly by avoiding the mask related costs and efforts (e.g. design, fabrication). Sing et al [3] reported on DWL patterning of OrmoComp for the use in microfluidics, however no results concerning the use of DWL for UV-NIL stamp fabrication were reported so far.