A soft-imprint technique for direct fabrication of submicron scale patterns using a surface-modified PDMS mold

A novel soft-imprint technique for fabrication of submicron scale polymer structures is proposed. The proposed technique, which can be performed at room temperature with very low pressure, is based on UV polymerization of a monomer that is patterned by application of an elastomeric polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) mold. To prevent the swelling of the PDMS mold by the monomer during the polymerization procedure, the mold surface is coated with an amorphous fluoropolymer, Teflon AF. By using the surface-modified PDMS mold, the submicron scale polymer structures are successfully generated with good pattern fidelity, and are also fabricated over large areas through the UV-based soft-imprint technique. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.