High Volume Manufacturing of Nanophotonic Devices by Nanoimprint Lithography
Roland WEINHAUPL
(EV Group)
Photonic applications are emerging rapidly using the fabrication infrastructure of the semiconductor industry to enable new functionalities, smaller form factors, improved performance and reduced costs. However, the majority of today’s semiconductor technology is used in the development of electronics, which are based on controlling the flow of electrons rather than on photons. Printing, or nano-patterning, of electronics is mainly a question of scaling to smaller geometries. In contrast, the nanoscale manipulation of light is at the core of developing the full potential of photonic devices, where shape and periodicity of the structures are the key parameters. For that reason, adequate nano-patterning solutions will play an essential role in the photonics market.
Despite the wide variety of photonic applications that exist, many share common manufacturing needs. To this end, direct writing methods have been extensively used for research and development of optical structures but these techniques cannot be easily scaled up for cost-efficient production. However, nanoimprint lithography (NIL), is in many cases key enabling to bridge the gap from R&D to high-volume manufacturing. NIL has the unique capability of adapting to the needs of the fragmented and less standardized photonic market more easily while still providing a low cost volume production solution. In particular, full-field UV-NIL can be used to stitch free patterns over large areas and supports a wide range of structure sizes and shapes, including 3D shapes, and can even be used on topography which can be essential criterion for many photonic devices.
