EMBOSSING OF NANOSCALE FEATURES AND ENVIRONMENTS

A process has been developed whereby nanoscale features can be easily and uniformly transferred into a thermoplastic with the use of embossi ng. Masters for the embossing procedure are made using electron beam l ithography, dry etching and electroplating and with these dies feature s as small as 60nm have been produced in the polymer cellulose acetate . In addition, it is shown that the plastic cellulose acetate can be p atterned using photolithography with sub 250nm UV light and that a con junction of these two pattern transfer methods allows fabrication of m ultiple layered plastic devices. An application for this two layer pro cess is presented where sub micron features can be easily and controll ably placed at the bottom of trenches, a normally very difficult proce dure.