Computational study of the effect of side wall quality of the template on release force in nanoimprint lithography

A template release force is one of the important factors for a low-defect template release process in nanoimprint lithography. In this work, the origin of the template release force is investigated by computational study of side wall quality characteristics such as the critical separation forces between the template and the resist interface, and the slope angle of the side wall. The critical separation forces in the normal and shear directions, which are related to adhesion and friction characteristics are experimentally evaluated for the computational study. The computational results show that the shear separation force, which is related to the static friction between the template surface and the resist, strongly affects the release force characteristics. On the other hand, the side wall slope angle also affects the template release force above the critical side wall slope angle. The computational results show good agreement with experimental results. (C) 2015 The Japan Society of Applied Physics