Experimental and Numerical Study on the Characteristics of the Thermal Design of a Large-Area Hot Plate for Nanoimprint Equipment

A numerical study was conducted on the thermal performance of a large-area hot plate specifically designed as a heating and cooling tool for thermal nanoimprint lithography processes. The hot plate had the dimensions 240 mm × 240 mm × 20 mm, in which a series of cartridge heaters and cooling holes were installed. Stainless steel was selected to endure the high molding pressures. To examine the hot plate’s abnormal thermal behavior, ANSYS Fluent V15.0, which is commercial CFD code, was used to perform computational analysis. A numerical model was employed to predict the thermal behavior of the hot plate in both the heating and cooling phases. To conduct the thermal design of a large-area hot plate for nanoimprint equipment, we selected the model to be studied and proposed a cooling model using both direct and indirect cooling methods with and without heat pipes. In addition, we created a small hot plate and performed experimental and computational analyses to confirm the validity of the proposed model. This study also analyzed problems that may occur in the stage prior to the large-area expansion of the hot plate. In the case of a stainless steel (STS304) hot plate for large-area hot plate expansion, the heat pipes were inserted in the direction of the cartridge heaters to address the problems that may occur when expanding the hot plate into a large area. As a result, the heating rate was 40 °C/min and the temperature uniformity was less than 1% of the maximum working temperature of 200 °C. For cooling, when considering pressure and using air as the coolant for the ends, a cooling rate of 20 °C/min and thermal performance of less than 13.2 °C (less than 7%) based on the maximum temperature were obtained. These results were similar to the experimental results.