Development of the Roll Type Incremental Micro Pattern Imprint System for Large Area Pattern Replication

Flexible display has been attracting attention in the research field of next generation display in recent years. And polymer is a candidate material for flexible displays as it takes advantages including transparency, light weight, flexibility and so on. Rolling process is suitable and competitive process for the high throughput of flexible substrate such as polymer. In this paper, we developed a prototype of roll-to-flat (R2F) thermal imprint system for large area micro pattern replication process, which is one the key process in the fabrication of flexible displays. Tests were conducted to evaluate the system feasibility and process parameters effect, such as flat mold temperature, loading pressure and rolling speed. 100 mm × 100 mm stainless steel flat mold and commercially available polycarbonate sheets were used for tests and results showed that the developed R2F system is suitable for fabrication of various micro devices with micro pattern replication on large area.

[1]  Yajuan Chen,et al.  32.3: Reliability and Performance of Flexible Electrophoretic Displays by Roll‐to‐Roll Manufacturing Processes , 2004 .

[2]  Abbie Gregg,et al.  Roll‐to‐Roll Manufacturing of Flexible Displays , 2005 .

[3]  L. J. Guo,et al.  Nanoimprint Lithography: Methods and Material Requirements , 2007 .

[4]  Gabi Gruetzner,et al.  Nanoimprint lithography: An alternative nanofabrication approach , 2003 .

[5]  Stephen Y. Chou,et al.  Imprint of sub-25 nm vias and trenches in polymers , 1995 .

[6]  Stephen Y. Chou,et al.  Imprint lithography with sub-10 nm feature size and high throughput , 1997 .

[7]  H. Kurz,et al.  Fabrication of nanostructures using a UV-based imprint technique , 2000 .

[8]  S. Chou,et al.  Roller nanoimprint lithography , 1998 .

[9]  G. Whitesides,et al.  Soft Lithography. , 1998, Angewandte Chemie.

[10]  Tomi Haatainen,et al.  Continuous roll to roll nanoimprinting of inherently conducting polyaniline , 2007 .

[11]  G. Whitesides,et al.  New approaches to nanofabrication: molding, printing, and other techniques. , 2005, Chemical reviews.

[12]  H. Kurz,et al.  Characterization and application of a UV-based imprint technique , 2001 .

[13]  Shinill Kang,et al.  Continuous ultraviolet roll nanoimprinting process for replicating large-scale nano-and micropatterns , 2006 .

[14]  Bernard Choi,et al.  Step and flash imprint lithography: a new approach to high-resolution patterning , 1999, Advanced Lithography.

[15]  G. Crawford.  Flexible Flat Panel Displays: Crawford/Flexible Flat Panel Displays , 2005 .

[16]  Vincent Studer,et al.  Nanoimprint lithography for the fabrication of DNA electrophoresis chips , 2002 .

[17]  Xiaojia Wang,et al.  48.5: Roll-to-Roll Manufacturing Process for Full Color Electrophoretic Film , 2006 .

[18]  Marc Behl,et al.  Nanoimprint lithography for organic electronics , 2002 .