Nanoimprint lithography for microfluidics manufacturing

Abstract

The history of imprint technology as lithography method for pattern replication can be traced back to 1970’s but the most significant progress has been made by the research group of S. Chou in the 1990’s. Since then, it has become a popular technique with a rapidly growing interest from both research and industrial sides and a variety of new approaches have been proposed along the mainstream scientific advances. Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is a novel method for the fabrication of micro/nanometer scale patterns with low cost, high throughput and high resolution. Unlike traditional optical lithographic approaches, which create pattern through the use of photons or electrons to modify the chemical and physical properties of the resist, NIL relies on direct mechanical deformation of the resist and can therefore achieve resolutions beyond the limitations set by light diffraction or beam scattering that are encountered in conventional lithographic techniques. The ability to fabricate structures from the micro- to the nanoscale with high precision in a wide variety of materials is of crucial importance to the advancement of micro- and nanotechnology and the biotech- sciences as a whole and will be discussed in this paper. Nanoimprinting can not only create resist patterns, as in lithography, but can also imprint functional device structures in various polymers, which can lead to a wide range of applications in electronics, photonics, data storage, and biotechnology.