Authors: Rabibrata Mukherjee Ashutosh Sharma Ganesh Patil Danish Faruqui Partho Sarathi Gooh Pattader
Publish Date: 2008/09/04
Volume: 31, Issue: 3, Pages: 249-261
Abstract
This is a brief review of our recent and ongoing work on simple rapid room temperature pressureless and large area ∼ cm2 imprinting techniques for high fidelity mesopatterning of different types of polymer films Examples include soft solid polymer films and surfaces like crosslinked polydimethylsiloxane PDMS and polyacrylamide PAA based hydrogels thermoplastics like polystyrene PS polymethylmethacrylate PMMA etc both on planar and curved surfaces These techniques address two key issues in imprinting i attainment of large area conformal contact with the stamp especially on curved surfaces and ii ease of stamp detachment without damage to the imprinted structures The key element of the method is the use of thin and flexible patterned foils that readily and rapidly come into complete conformal contact with soft polymer surfaces because of adhesive interfacial interactions The conformal contact is established at all length scales by bending of the foil at scales larger than the feature size in conjunction with the spontaneous deformations of the film surface on the scale of the features Complex twodimensional patterns could also be formed even by using a simple onedimensional master by multiple imprinting The technique can be particularly useful for the bulk nano applications requiring routine fabrication of templates for example in the study of confined chemistry phenomena nanofluidics bioMEMS microimprinting optical coatings and controlled dewetting
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