Advanced Monitoring for Nanoimprint Lithography

Nanoimprint lithography has the advantages of high throughput, sub‐10‐nm feature and low cost. A problem of incomplete filling rate is, however, encountered in the imprinting process and needs to be understood for pattern fidelity. The filling rate is often measured with a scanning electron microscopy (SEM), which is a destructive measurement. In this study, a non‐destructive measurement of the filling rate was proposed. We proposed using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) to monitor the filling rate during the imprint process for subsequent imprinting parameters. When the filling rate varied, it changed the resonance behavior, including the reflectivity and resonance angle. The analysis demonstrated this innovative method for the monitoring of filling rate is effective.