Hot embossing - a flexible and successful replication technology for polymer MEMS

Molding of micro components from thermoplastic polymers has become a routinely used industrial production process. Besides the famous injection molding technology hot embossing is nearly unknown to most people in micro technology. Initially developed for first feasibility tests with microstructured moldinserts hot embossing has been developed during the last ten years to a flexible and successful replication technology for polymer MEMS: Material screening, rapid prototyping but even small series with far more then 10.000 components has lead to a first commercialization of the related machinery. But also high end applications, difficult to realize with other technologies, are requested to replicate complex microstructures. This paper gives an overview about the development of this technique and presents some new developments.