Temperature Dependent Nanotribological Behavior of Ultrathin Thermoplastic Polymeric Resist Films Studied by Use of AFM

Nanoimprint Lithography (NIL) is emerging novel high resolution fabrication technique. In principle it is a hot embossing of a polymer resist used as a mask in further process steps. Currently, a much effort is ongoing on optimizing the properties of the polymer resists by chemical modifications. To assess the influence of them on the polymer properties it was required to develop a methodology for testing these materials in terms of their use in the NIL process. It turned out that the temperature dependent tribological properties of them are especially useful. In this study an atomic force microscope (AFM) with a modified silicon spherical-tip cantilever was used to test the temperature dependent nanotribological properties of mr-I 7000E amorphous thermoplastic polymer resist devoted to NIL. The methodology, the equipment used in these studies as well as the results of the estimation of lateral forces versus temperature will be presented and discussed.