Nano Lithography

Chapter 2

NanoImprint Lithography ¹

2.1. From printing to NanoImprint

Today, printing has become a common thing thanks to several technological revolutions. After the development of the first written forms 30,000 years B.C., cuneiform writing, invented by Mesopotamian Sumerians, appeared 4000 years B.C. This form of writing was mainly produced using a sharpened reed on a clay tablet. The Sumerians also created the cylinder seal, today considered to be the first impression technique: symbols were carved into a stone cylinder which was then rolled over fresh clay; the imprinted pattern constituted a seal.

It was only in 1908 that an Italian archeologist, Luigi Pernier, discovered what is considered to be the earliest imprinted item: the Phaistos disk (Figure 2.1), dating from the 17th Century B.C, which is a clay disk covered with hieroglyphs embossed by stamps. It has a 16 cm diameter, is only 1.2 cm thick and was made by pressing sculpted symbols into wet clay, which was then baked and attached to a support. The disk is covered with unknown pictograms on both faces. The first traces of seals or stamp impressions on clay can thus be dated from many centuries before our age.

Ten centuries later, the first imprinted coins appear in ancient Greece and Asia. The impressions consist of a symbol to represent a value, and that value in writing. They are therefore considered to be the first examples of products from a mass impression technique. In Western Europe, between the 1st and the ...