Study on the resin temperature developments during UV imprinting process

During the imprinting process, the temperature of the UV resin increases as the phase of the resin changes from fluid into solid. During UV curing, some amount of heat is released from inside the resin and transferred into contacting materials. The heat flow is measured with photo-DSC, and other related thermal and mechanical properties of the resin. With the measured material properties, the temperature developments both inside of the resin layer and along the interfaces of the contacting materials are computed. During the UV exposure period, the thermal deformation of the mold, which directly influences the pattern distortion are investigated. Under this condition, the developments of strain and temperature inside the mold structure including the UV resin of 3-D shape are computed with the transient time scale during UV curing according to the thickness of resin layer. These computational results are expected to provide useful information for better designs of the imprinting mold and the process condition.