Initial study of the fabrication of step and flash imprint lithography templates for the printing of contact holes

Step and flash imprint lithography (S-FIL) is an attractive method for printing sub-100-nm geometries. Relative to other imprinting processes, S-FIL has the advantage of the template being transparent, thereby facilitating conventional overlay techniques. In addition, the imprint process is performed at low pressures and room temperature, minimizing magnification and distortion errors. As a result, it may be possible to use S-FIL to build integrated circuits. The purpose of this work is to investigate the fabrication methods needed to form templates capable of printing sub-100-nm contact holes. A positive resist process is used to image both holes and pillars on the template. After fabrication, the templates are used to print both contacts and pillars. The dense 80-nm imprinted contacts measure 65 nm, a consequence of undersizing on the template. For relaxed pitches, contacts smaller than 30 nm are observed. Pillars as small as 50 nm are also cleanly printed. At 40 nm, pillar size is inconsistent, and missing pillars are evident. Modifications to the template fabrication process will be necessary to study the feasibility of printing even smaller contacts and pillars. (C) 2004 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.