Fabrication of the finestructured alumina materials with nanoimprint method

Abstract

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL), is recognized as one of the candidates for next generation nanolithography. Usually nanoimprint equipment is highly expensive because the nano-scale mold needs to be hardened with thermal and photonic treatment after casting. In this study, we attempted to fabricate finestructured alumina materials without using highly expensive equipment. This method is based on the idea that poly vinyl alcohol (PVA) is simply detached from silicon mold by peeling. The experiment process used PVA and alumina nano-size particle, mixed in water solution. The mixed solution was then put into a micro-scale Si-mold and hardened at room temperature. After hardening the PVA and alumina nano-size particle mixed solution was detached from the micro-scale Si-mold. Throughout burn-out and low-temperature sintering, we confirmed the fabrication of finestructured micrometer-size alumina with nano-size pores. © 2009 The Ceramic Society of Japan.