Highly uniform residual layers for arrays of 3D nanoimprinted cavities in Fabry–Pérot-filter-array-based nanospectrometers

Imran Memon, Yannan Shen, Abdullah Khan, Carsten Woidt, Hartmut Hillmer
2015 Applied Nanoscience  
Miniaturized optical spectrometers can be implemented by an array of Fabry-Pérot (FP) filters. FP filters are composed of two highly reflecting parallel mirrors and a resonance cavity. Each filter transmits a small spectral band (filter line) depending on its individual cavity height. The optical nanospectrometer, a miniaturized FPbased spectrometer, implements 3D NanoImprint technology for the fabrication of multiple FP filter cavities in a single process step. However, it is challenging to
more » ... id the dependency of residual layer (RL) thickness on the shape of the printed patterns in NanoImprint. Since in a nanospectrometer the filter cavities vary in height between neighboring FP filters and, thus, the volume of each cavity varies causing that the RL varies slightly or noticeably between different filters. This is one of the few disadvantages of NanoImprint using soft templates such as substrate conformal imprint lithography which is used in this paper. The advantages of large area soft templates can be revealed substantially if the problem of laterally inhomogeneous RLs can be avoided or reduced considerably. In the case of the nanospectrometer, non-uniform RLs lead to random variations in the designed cavity heights resulting in the shift of desired filter lines. To achieve highly uniform RLs, we report a volume-equalized template design with the lateral distribution of 64 different cavity heights into several units with each unit comprising four cavity heights. The average volume of each unit is kept constant to obtain uniform filling of imprint material per unit area. The imprint results, based on the volume-equalized template, demonstrate highly uniform RLs of 110 nm thickness.
doi:10.1007/s13204-015-0468-9 fatcat:3gn7rrcd55fwbb3lu6xxzwprgu