Depth analysis of molecular orientation induced by nanoimprint graphoepitaxy

The nanoimprint process is a useful technique for the fabrication of various nanostructures on functional materials without the use of any etching processes. We previously confirmed that the molecular orientation of a photo-crosslinkable liquid crystalline polymer (PLCP) was induced by nanoimprinting using a process called nanoimprint graphoepitaxy. In this work, we repeat the previous O-2 reactive ion etching processing and molecular orientation evaluation to examine the depth profile of the unidirectional molecular orientation that is induced by nanoimprint graphoepitaxy. The results obtained indicate that the initial PLCP film thickness affects the resulting unidirectional molecular orientation depth. (C) 2017 The Japan Society of Applied Physics