Buckling Analysis of Soft Nanostructure in Nanoimprinting

Nanoimprint lithography is an economical and convenient method for manufacturing nanostructures, which has developed very quickly and has been widely used in the nanoindustry. However, during the process of nanoimprinting, mechanical instabilities of soft nanostructures could lead to buckling. In order to study the mechanism of this problem, we analyze the buckling of one vertical elastic column under its own weight. Based on the comparison between two critical heights of different substrates (rigid and elastic), we conclude that the approximation of considering the substrate as rigid is acceptable. Furthermore the interaction between columns with the deformation of a substrate could lead to collective buckling. Our theoretical calculations show that whether the columns are elastic or rigid makes little difference for the buckling modes.