School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
Nanotechnology. 2011 Jun 3;22(22):225302. doi: 10.1088/0957-4484/22/22/225302. Epub 2011 Apr 4.
We report a non-conventional shear-force-driven nanofabrication approach, inclined nanoimprint lithography (INIL), for producing 3D nanostructures of varying heights on planar substrates in a single imprinting step. Such 3D nanostructures are fabricated by exploiting polymer anisotropic dewetting where the degree of anisotropy can be controlled by the magnitude of the inclination angle. The feature size is reduced from micron scale of the template to a resultant nanoscale pattern. The underlying INIL mechanism is investigated both experimentally and theoretically. The results indicate that the shear force generated at a non-zero inclination angle induced by the INIL apparatus essentially leads to asymmetry in the polymer flow direction ultimately resulting in 3D nanopatterns with different heights. INIL removes the requirements in conventional nanolithography of either utilizing 3D templates or using multiple lithographic steps. This technique enables various 3D nanoscale devices including angle-resolved photonic and plasmonic crystals to be fabricated.
我们提出了一种非传统的剪切力驱动的纳米制造方法，即倾斜纳米压印光刻（INIL），可在单次压印步骤中在平面衬底上制造具有不同高度的 3D 纳米结构。通过利用聚合物各向异性去湿来制造这种 3D 纳米结构，其中各向异性的程度可以通过倾斜角的大小来控制。特征尺寸从模板的微米级缩小到所得的纳米级图案。通过实验和理论研究了潜在的 INIL 机制。结果表明，INIL 设备在非零倾斜角下产生的剪切力实质上导致聚合物流动方向的不对称，最终导致具有不同高度的 3D 纳米图案。INIL 消除了传统纳米光刻中使用 3D 模板或使用多个光刻步骤的要求。该技术可用于制造各种 3D 纳米级器件，包括角度分辨光子晶体和等离子体晶体。
