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.
IBN, Research Centre Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany, and IFF, Research Centre Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany.
Ovidiu D
OD
Gordan
Bo N J
BN
Persson
Claudia M
CM
Cesa
Dirk
D
Mayer
Bernd
B
Hoffmann
Sabine
S
Dieluweit
Rudolf
R
Merkel