Hot embossing is a pattern-transfer technique, involving the application of pressure and heat to a polymeric or resist-coated substrate, placed in contact with a master mould. This allows the relief features on the mould to be transferred faithfully. Hot embossing achieves fast patterning at a resolution of 50nm.

This technique addresses a wide range of applications, from polymer-based lab-on-chip systems, where imprinting is performed on thick polymers substrates, for the fabrication of sub 50nm features for bio-sensing or data recording applications, as well as microfluidics, MEMS, optoelectronics, packaging and SOI production.