Microfabrication by soft lithography has attracted increasing attention in recent years. Ceramic microfabrication by soft lithography normally utilizes ceramic precursor solutions or sol–gel process. However, the low solids loading of the starting materials compromises the fidelity of soft lithography, causing the aspect ratio of obtained submicrometer ceramic features to be very small. In this study, well‐dispersed, high solids loading ZnO nanoparticle suspensions are prepared by electrosterically stabilizing 20 nm ZnO nanoparticles. ZnO nanoparticle‐based submicrometer rod arrays with an aspect ratio around 1 are fabricated by micromolding the ZnO nanoparticle suspension into polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) molds. Modified PDMS molds are exploited to optimize the filling depth of the suspension into the mold cavities, producing ZnO submicrometer rods with the same dimensions as the mold features. ZnO rods with various diameters and shapes are fabricated, and the effect of solids loading on soft lithography fidelity is discussed. A mechanism describing the effects of surface wetting on the fidelity of soft lithographic micromolding is proposed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.