Rapid soft lithography by bottom-up enhanced capillarity.
The growing demand for new solutions to pursue the trend of micro- and nanoelectronics predicted by Moore's law is stimulating the development of new high-resolution, low-cost lithographies. Here we demonstrate that several bottom-up approaches can be used to increase the throughput of soft lithography by exploiting the enhanced hydrophilicity, the low viscosity, and the fragility of the employed materials. In particular, the customized functionalization of the involved surfaces to improve the wettability to polymer fluids and the dramatic decrease of the viscosity of polymer compounds as the temperature is increased, together with the good thermal stability of the functionalized surfaces, allow a faster filling of elastomeric channels, up to almost an order of magnitude with respect to conventional microfluidics.
Dario
D
Pisignano
Francesca
F
Di Benedetto
Luana
L
Persano
Giuseppe
G
Gigli
Roberto
R
Cingolani