Thermal and Lithographic Performance of Silsesquioxane with Cycloaliphatic Epoxy‐Siloxane Hybrid Spacer for Soft Lithography

Pattern replication and fidelity are crucial during soft lithography process. The flexibility and surface energy of the resist with that of the master mold are among the factors in determining such an effect. In this work, polysilsesquioxane bearing cycloaliphatic‐epoxy spacer of different chain len...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMacromolecular materials and engineering Vol. 303; no. 2
Main Authors Ramli, Mohamad Riduwan, Ramli, Rafiza, Mohamed, Khairudin, Ahmad, Zulkifli
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Weinheim John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.02.2018
Subjects
Chains
cycloaliphatic epoxy
Flexibility
Gravimetric analysis
lithographic performance
Lithography
Molds
Polymethyl methacrylate
Polysilsesquioxanes
Replication
siloxane
silsesquioxane
spacer length
Surface energy
Thermal analysis
Thermal stability
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Summary:Pattern replication and fidelity are crucial during soft lithography process. The flexibility and surface energy of the resist with that of the master mold are among the factors in determining such an effect. In this work, polysilsesquioxane bearing cycloaliphatic‐epoxy spacer of different chain length at tethered positions is synthesized. Pattern replication using soft lithography is made using polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) as master mold. The thermal and UV‐cured lithographic performances are studied using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA). It shows that chain length of spacer induces flexibility and thermal stability. Despite chain flexibility, increase in spacer length results in poor lithographic performance. This can be attributed to the behavior of spreading parameter with different surface energy between the PMMA mold and the polysiloxane resist surfaces. Different length of polysiloxane spacer is designed to understand the thermal and lithographic behaviors of silsesquioxane macromer. Cycloaliphatic epoxy is incorporated to the spacer for the crosslinking process upon ultra‐violet (UV) radiation. The study gives an understanding that the increasing of spacer increases thermal property and reduces the capability of micro‐pattern to be replicated with high fidelity.
ISSN:1438-7492
1439-2054
DOI:10.1002/mame.201700371