Nanoimprint lithography is well recognized as one of the most promising enabling nanomanufacturing technologies for a broad range of industries. In nanoimprint, one of the most critical bottleneck and challenge is the fabrication of imprint templates. Without templates, nanoimprint cannot replicate any patterns. Yet many nanoimprint templates that we need are well beyond today's nanopatterning capabilities (either features are too small, or areas too large, or both). The goal of the proposed research is to develop several innovative nontraditional nanopatterning methods, which, when used individually or together, can fabricate various nanoimprint templates that have not been able to be fabricated before; in particular, one of the most needed- large-area imprint templates: large-area sub-20-nm half-pitch gratings and grids, that have broad and significant applications in multiple disciplines. The proposed innovative methods are in three areas: (i) new methods of generating nanoimprint master templates of features size and pattern area far beyond traditional nanopatterning (guided self-assembly of diblock copolymer, frequency doubling, and multiple nanoimprinting), (ii) innovative methods of improving and repairing nanoimprint templates (self-perfection of nanostructure and smoothing by crystalline-plane anisotropic etching), and (iii) innovative methods of high fidelity replication of daughter templates from masters (room-temperature CVD and liquid casting of novel materials). This research will develop an enabling and fundamental nanomanufacturing technology of wide applications in a broad range of industries, from new materials, data storage, optical communication, semiconductor ICs, displays, to biotechnology, solar cells, fuel cells, to name a just a few; and generate new cutting-edge knowledge in nanopatterning. Thus, the success of the proposed research will benefit U.S.'s competitiveness in nanotechnology, aid U.S industry, and will potentially have significant economic impact. The research will train graduate and undergraduate students in the new technology area of nanomanufacturing.
