On pattern transfer in replica molding.
Nano- and micromolding of elastic materials produces smoothed replicas of the mold structures. This limits the technique's resolution. Here we identified surface tension as the cause of smoothing and derived explicit equations for calculating molded feature shapes. The characteristic length scale for smoothing is given by the ratio of the interface tension to Young's modulus of the molded material. This approach offers the possibility to correct for the smoothing caused by surface tension during mold design. Moreover, it can be exploited to measure interface tension.
Gordan
Ovidiu D
OD
IBN, Research Centre Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany, and IFF, Research Centre Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany.
Persson
Bo N J
BN
Cesa
Claudia M
CM
Mayer
Dirk
D
Hoffmann
Bernd
B
Dieluweit
Sabine
S
Merkel
Rudolf
R