In 2025, the lithography landscape is rapidly evolving in response to a new set of industrial, economic, and environmental demands.
Whether you are working with mask lithography, two-photon lithography, or more conventional nanoimprint lithography methods, achieving high-resolution feature designs in a scalable, commercially viable way is essential to bring innovations to market.
As miniaturised features become essential across modern photonics, life sciences, energy, and semiconductors, lithographic techniques must adapt. Functional surface applications now require replication onto substrates beyond traditional glass or silicon wafers. Evaluating the scaling limitations of current patterning methods reveals key insights across the nanopatterning technology landscape. Let’s dive further.
Image credit: Stensborg A/S
2025 landscape of nanoimprint and nanopatterning replication technologies
There is increasing pressure on industries to implement more sustainable, high-efficiency manufacturing methods, even as research and development budgets become more constrained.
Across sectors, one challenge is shared across the board: how can we produce increasingly intricate features on diverse substrates (flexible, non-transparent, or otherwise) with the precision, scalability, and cost-efficiency required for commercial viability?
The image below (created by Stensborg) illustrates the competitive landscape of feature patterning technologies, with a central focus on nanoimprint lithography (NIL), featuring key players like ASML, EV Group, ZEISS, Morphotonics, and technologies like hot embossing, spin coating, and 2-photon lithography.
When it comes to working with non-transparent materials, few current options offer the throughput and precision required to transition from prototype to production. Let’s look at some of them.
Limitations of mask lithography and conventional lithography methods for upscaling nano-feature production
Innovations in biosensing, photonics, energy harvesting, and optoelectronics increasingly require patterning on substrates that may be opaque to UV light.
Transparent fused silica substrates are no longer the default. Instead, engineers are reaching for metal, black polyimides, pre-coated flexible polymers to meet emerging design and performance specifications.
This shift presents significant challenges for conventional mastering or nanopatterning techniques.
Mask lithography, while long regarded as the industry standard, involves complex, light-transmitting process steps. It also requires extensive cleanroom infrastructures, making it both impractical and costly for research labs and manufacturers seeking agile, resource-efficient solutions.
Two-photon lithography delivers the feature resolution required for cutting-edge innovation, but its low throughput and high cost make it unfeasible for scalable surface fabrication, especially for applications not yet at a mature stage.
When we consider replication methods such as injection moulding, these offer efficiency for high-volume production with finalised designs. However, they fall short for nanoscale structures due to material flow limitations, high tooling costs, and inability to replicate sub-micron features effectively.
Similarly, hot embossing presents challenges when used with thermally sensitive substrates, including material shrinkage of thermoplastics, greater risk of air entrapment, and difficulties in reliably replicating features with higher aspect ratios, all of which can affect nanoscale fidelity and overall device performance.
The result is a significant gap for researchers and manufacturers alike, who require solutions that are both scalable and material adaptable (transparent and non-transparent capabilities) at multiple stages of innovation.
Moving beyond soft lithography: high-speed nanoimprint on flexible and opaque substrates
One promising alternative that has matured significantly is Nanoimprint Lithography (NIL), which builds upon concepts from soft lithography.
Traditional soft lithography, which uses PDMS and other elastomeric materials, offers versatile molding and stamping methods for creating microstructures. However, it has limitations in throughput and scalability for volume production.
At Stensborg, we’ve built upon the core principles of soft lithography to develop our Rolling Nanoimprint Lithography (RNIL) approach – a high-throughput, UV-curable, roll-based process that enables continuous, large-scale nanofabrication. Unlike soft lithography’s stamping, RNIL uses precise rolling contact and room-temperature
UV curing for industrial-scale production of nanostructured surfaces.
This innovation underpins both our Desktop Roll NanoImprinter 3.0 for lab-scale prototyping and our custom roll-to-roll (R2R) systems for high-throughput industrial manufacturing. Whether you’re producing a handful of patterned samples or thousands of square metres of nanostructured film per week, the same UV-nip architecture ensures consistency and reliability.
How it works: Stensborg’s rolling nanoimprint lithography (RNIL)
At the heart of our platform is the Stensborg Optical Engine, a patented system that focuses UV light directly into a narrow line (the nip) where curing of the imprinted structure occurs.
Its line contact design dramatically reduces the required imprinting force while mitigating air entrapment, enabling faster processing speeds and better pattern uniformity than large-area methods.
Operating at a wavelength of 395 nm, Stensborg’s UV system leverages the absorption wavelength of standard photoinitiators while utilising cost-effective, high-power UV-LEDs.
This wavelength offers optimal penetration depth for thicker resin layers that would otherwise block shorter wavelengths. Combined with its unique placement within the cylinder, the optical engine enables effective operation with both transparent and opaque substrates, including foils, coloured polymers, and coated films.
Modular and scalable by design, the same core technology adapts easily to different production volumes and feature requirements. The Desktop Roll NanoImprinter 3.0 was engineered to address modern replication challenges through a compact, fast, and high-resolution format. Featuring line-focused imprinting and intuitive parameter adjustment, it supports safe, high-speed operation for rapid prototyping, testing, and small-batch production.
Partnering with Stensborg: a seamless nanoimprint process from prototyping to production
With over 25 years of expertise in holography and nanoimprint technologies, Stensborg delivers the process consistency, pattern fidelity, and material compatibility for scaling innovations with confidence.
By working with one consistent optical platform across the entire development cycle, our customers eliminate the technological gaps that often exist between research and production. This reduces time-to-market and improves performance efficiency at every stage. Our industrial R2R systems further enhance this capability, bringing additional flexibility and throughput, while supporting customisable imprint widths up to 500 mm and feature sizes as small as 20 nm.
All our rolling nanoimprint equipment is modular by design, allowing for the integration of complementary coating techniques such as slot-die coating, spray coating, inkjet printing, and other established deposition methods.
Rolling speeds can be tuned from as slow as 0.005 m/min for precision applications with our R2P desktop, up to several meters per minute for high-volume R2R NIL production. This adaptability makes Stensborg’s Rolling Nanoimprint Lithography the ideal solution for applications ranging from AR/VR optical components to solar films and biochips.
Whether you’re developing next-generation biochips, structuring optics on black polyimide, or producing flexible photonic films, Stensborg delivers scalable replication where mask lithography cannot.
Backed by comprehensive engineering support and application expertise, we guide your end-to-end journey: offering consultation, customisation, and scaling guidance from design concept to commercial deployment.
If you’re seeking an alternative to mask lithography or flat-to-flat NIL processing that works equally well with transparent and non-transparent substrates while meeting thermal-sensitive requirements, Stensborg offers a uniquely powerful, flexible solution.
