Sub-10 nm silicon ridge nanofabrication by advanced edge lithography for NIL applications

A new nanofabrication scheme is presented to form stamps useful in thermal nanoimprint lithography (T-NIL). The stamp is created in <110> single crystalline silicon using a full-wet etching procedure including local oxidation of silicon (LOCOS) and employing an adapted edge lithography technique on top of conventional photolithography. Ridges down to 10 nm in width have been produced. The silicon ridges have no inbuilt stress and are therefore less fragile than previously fabricated oxide ridges. The ridge sample is used as a template in T-NIL and a full 100 mm wafer size imprint has been successfully carried out in both polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and mr-I 7020E polymer. Moreover, the imprinted pattern in PMMA is subsequently transferred into a device wafer.