Thermal expansion and contraction of an elastomer stamp causes position-dependent polymer patterns in capillary force lithography

It is often observed that polymer patterns fabricated by capillary force lithography (CFL) are not identical, position-dependent even in one sample. The drawback has not been successfully explained so far. This paper reveals that the position-dependent pattern is mainly caused by the volume expansion and contraction of the elastomer stamp during heating and cooling in the CFL process. The stamp expands on a polymer liquid on heating, accumulating the polymer at one side-wall of each pattern of the stamp. And the stamp shrinks back to the initial position, accumulating the polymer at the opposite wall of the stamp pattern. For crystalline polymers, the morphology was mainly determined by the annealing temperature, that is, the degree of expansion. The position-dependence of the morphology was enhanced as the annealing temperature was increased. For amorphous polymers, the morphology was sensitive to cooling rate. Fast cooling led to a frozen morphology generated at the hot annealing temperature, while slow cooling produced an opposite morphology from the one at the annealing. The experimental results were theoretically explained by analyzing thermal expansion of the stamp and the shear stress exerted in the polymer layer. In the conclusion, we added our suggestions to avoid the nonuniformity in the polymer pattern by CFL process.