Anthony J. Lucio Chemistry (ACS) major
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS Lucio, A. J., Karpovich, D.S., & Robbins, L. (2011, March). Emulsions utilizing heavy fuel oil and crude glycerin: A surfactant study. Paper st presented at The 241 American Chemical Society National Meeting, Anaheim, CA. Lucio, A.J., Karpovich, D.S., Polega, J.R. (SVSU student), & VanWert, M.E. (SVSU student) (2011, March). Inspiring youth through chemistry: st Outreach where it matters. Paper presented at The 241 American Chemical Society National Meeting, Anaheim, CA. Lucio, A.J. (2011, August).Shape evolution of polymer structures with thin residual layers prepared by nanoimprint lithography. (2011). Paper presented at The United States Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology Student Colloquium, Gaithersburg, MD. Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is a patterning technique with numerous applications in nanotechnology. Here we measured the shape evolution of nanoimprinted polymer gratings during thermal annealing using a spectroscopic ellipsometer and analyze the data using a rigorouscoupled-wave analysis (RCWA). Previous work on the project successfully characterized the shape evolution of the NIL gratings and it was found that samples with ~10 nm residual layers decay more slowly. The work presented here focuses on polymer gratings of poly (t-butyl styrene) (PtBS), poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and polystyrene (PS). Highly entangled polymers were annealed above their glass transition temperatures (Tg) for 600 minutes to study the reflow characteristics. Our results indicate that the polymer samples with thin residual layers need to be annealed well above the Tg (at Tg+25째C) in order for the reflow process to occur in a timely manner. All the samples increased in height before eventually decaying. Possible mechanisms include: chemical grafting or crosslinking to the substrate from high temperature and pressure and physical adsorption to the substrate, as a result of the imprinting process. These results suggest that physical adsorption of the polymer to the substrate is the likely mechanism for slow reflow in polymer samples with thin residual layers.
Research Bulletin 2011
315