Fabrication of carbon nanostructures using photo-nanoimprint lithography and pyrolysis

High-throughput synthesis of carbon nanostructures with reproducible shape and dimensions, at desired locations, has been a key challenge for further exploring carbon nanostructures as functional units in various nanodevices. In this work, carbon structures with dimensions from the 50 nano- to micrometer level have been fabricated by carbonizing a photo-nanoimprint lithography patterned resist polymer (AR-UL-01) at high temperature under inert atmosphere. The resulting carbon nanostructures showed significant vertical shrinkage but minimal loss in the lateral direction. Thermal behavior studies of the resist polymer in the pyrolysis cycle indicated gaseous evolution of various byproducts before the formation of solid carbon. Microstructure, elemental composition and resistivity characterization of the nanostructures produced by this process has shown that the carbon derived from a pyrolyzed nanoimprint resist is very similar to the pyrolyzed photoresist carbon from an SU-8 negative-tone photoresist. This simple approach is valuable as a wafer-level carbon nano-patterning technique.