Fabrication of SnO2 Nano-to-Microscale Structures from SnO2-Nanoparticle-Dispersed Resin via Thermal Nanoimprint Lithography

Abstract

Recently, nanoimprint lithography (NIL) has been extensively investigated as a cost-effective, high-throughput, nano-patterning method, especially for the fabrication of optical devices such as light emitting diodes and thin film solar cells. Thermal nanoimprint lithography (thermal-NIL), one of various methods of NIL, can be applied with relative ease for the fabrication of various nanoscale structures, even on flexible substrates. However, conventional thermal-NIL that uses polymeric resin such as Poly(methyl methacrylate) has limited applicability to the fabrication of optical devices, owing to the low refractive index of the resin. As such, we developed SnO2-nanoparticle-containing imprint resin that has a high refractive index and is applicable in the thermal-NIL method. We confirmed that various SnO2 nano-to-microscale structures were successfully fabricated via the thermal-NIL process, by using this SnO2-dispersed resin. The optical properties of the patterned SnO2 structures were analyzed via ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometry and crystallinity of these patterned SnO2 structures was determined via X-ray diffraction analysis.