Fabrication of 1D nanochannels on thermoplastic substrates using microchannel compression

We present a new method to fabricate one-dimensional (1D) nanochannels on a thermoplastic substrate. This method has two main steps. First, a mold with microscale features is used to replicate microchannels on a thermoplastic substrate. Second, the fabricated microchannel is compressed to a 1D nanochannel at a temperature above the glass transition temperature (T_g) of the themoplastics. The effects of compression temperature, compression pressure, retaining time and loading rate on microchannel compression have been studied. Results have shown that a 1D nanochannel of 1–30 μm wide and 200–300 nm deep can be readily fabricated by using this method.