A New Grating Fabrication Technique on Metal Films Using UV-Nanoimprint Lithography

Although grating fabrication technologies on solid materials are well developed, grating fabrication on free standing films is rather more difficult. We propose a new film grating fabrication method based on UV-nanoimprint lithography. This method combines the grating fabrication technique using nanoimprint lithography with thin film preparation technology. It involves the fabrication of a PMMA grating by UV-nanoimprint lithography, followed by the preparation of a thin metal film on the PMMA grating and the patterning of the tensile film specimen through photolithography. After dissolving the PMMA layer, the tensile film specimen becomes a free standing structure. To identify the quality of the thin film specimen as well as the grating, the specimen is loaded with uniaxial tensile stress. The Moiré method is adopted to measure the full-field deformation and the mechanical parameters of the film specimen. The successful results verify the potential of this method in grating fabrication on other film-like specimens.