Soft lithography meets self-organization: Some new developments in meso-patterning

This is a brief review of our recent and ongoing work on simple, rapid, room temperature, pressure-less and large area (∼ cm²) imprinting techniques for high fidelity meso-patterning of different types of polymer films. Examples include soft solid polymer films and surfaces like cross-linked 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 two-dimensional patterns could also be formed even by using a simple one-dimensional 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, bio-MEMS, micro-imprinting, optical coatings and controlled dewetting.