GISAXS Study of Lateral Instability in Nanoimprinted Polymer Gratings

ORAL

Abstract

We experimentally investigate thermal decay instability that occurs in nanoimprinted lithography (NIL) polymer nanostructures. Thermal stability of soft polymer imprinted nanoscale patterns is a major challenge for NIL applications. Due to Laplace pressure, polymer patterns develop instability that reduces surface energy during annealing. Time-Resolved Grazing Incident Small Angle X-ray Scattering (GISAXS) allows us to precisely measure in-situ development of such thermal instability process with nanoscale resolution and timescale down to 10 ms. In addition to the conventional exponential pattern height decay, we also observe a lateral instability of the polymer lines during heating above glass transition temperature. This lateral instability is marked by an out-of-phase lateral ``zigzag'' undulation of the polymer lines and a local coalescence of the lines as they approach one another. We will show how this behavior can be studied with time-resolved GISAXS by characterizing instability parameters such as undulation wavelength, correlation lengths, pattern height etc.

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Authors

  • Yeling Dai

    Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, University of California at San Diego

  • O. G. Shpyrko

    University of California San Diego, Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, UC San Diego, University of California at San Diego, University of California, San Diego, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA

  • Kyle Alvine

    Pacific Northwest National Lab

  • Joseph Strzalka

    APS,Argonne National Lab

  • A. Sandy

    Argonne National Laboratory, APS,Argonne National Lab, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439, USA, ANL-APS

  • Hyun Wook Ro

    NIST, National Institute of Standards and Technology

  • Soles Christopher

    NIST