Inspection and fabrication of nano-imprint stamp using electron and ion dual beam system

Nano-imprint lithography (NIL) is an emerging high-resolution parallel patterning method, mainly aimed towards fields in which high-end photolithography methods are costly and do not provide sufficient resolution at reasonable throughput. High resolution stamp patterning can currently be performed by electron and ion dual beam system. By scanning the focused electron beam (or ion beam) while injecting a suitable organometallic precursor gas around the location of e-beam (or ion beam) and just above the stamp substrate, a high-density and high-uniformity hard mask for subsequent etching without use proximity-effect correction techniques. Furthermore, this technique can also directly deposit a metal pattern for interconnect or a dielectric pattern on NIL stamp without the need for separate metal or dielectric deposition, photoresist etch-mask, and etching processes. FEI Helios Nano Lab™ 1200 and Nova Nano Lab™ 600 dual beam system are used in this work for NIL stamp inspection and fabrication.