Design of seal ring with rectangular grooves for gas isolation in Nanoimprint Lithography

Abstract

The prominent seal ring has been studied to prevent the compressed air from entering the enclosed area of the mold and the wafer and protect pattern in Compressional Gas Cushion Press Nanoimprint Lithography (CGCP NIL). In this paper, a non-salient seal ring with rectangular grooves was proposed to replace the prominent one, which achieved the same effect. The relationship between the width of seal ring and other three factors—the contact surface properties, the height of printed liquid, and the contact angle—was also investigated. The non-salient seal ring can be effective in sealing out the compressed air, on condition that the seal ring was wide enough. Besides, the width to meet the requirements reduced significantly, with increasing the roughness. Furthermore, the rectangular grooves etched on the seal ring can increase its surface roughness and the depth–width ratio was larger, surface roughness was bigger. Owing to the presence of rectangular grooves, smaller width was required to reach the same effect of leak-proof in the process. Besides, a simple model of COMSOL Multiphysics was established to verify the correctness of proposal. This work will greatly reduce the cost of the mold and guide the production of the mold in CGCP NIL.