A Facile Approach for Fabricating Microstructured Surface Based on Etched Template by Inkjet Printing Technology

Abstract

Microstructures are playing an important role in manufacturing functional devices, due to their unique properties, such as wettability or flexibility. Recently, various microstructured surfaces have been fabricated to realize functional applications. To achieve the applications, photolithography or printing technology is utilized to produce the microstructures. However, these methods require preparing templates or masks, which are usually complex and expensive. Herein, a facile approach for fabricating microstructured surfaces was studied based on etched template by inkjet printing technology. Precured polydimethylsiloxane substrate was etched by inkjet printing water-soluble polyacrylic acid solution. Then, the polydimethylsiloxane substrate was cured and rinsed, which could be directly used as template for fabricating microstructured surfaces. Surfaces with raised dots, lines, and squares, were facilely obtained using the etched templates by inkjet printing technology. Furthermore, controllable anisotropic wettability was exhibited on the raised line microstructured surface. This work provides a flexible and scalable way to fabricate various microstructured surfaces. It would bring about excellent performance, which could find numerous applications in optoelectronic devices, biological chips, microreactors, wearable products, and related fields.

Simulation of droplet ejection based on electromechanical parameters & chemical condition for controlling inkjet printing devices

“…2. And consist of four stages in each cycle [35]. In the first step, the velocity rises instantaneously up to 260 cm/s and keeps constant for 16 μs, in the second stage, the velocity falls down directly to zero and keeps for 12 μs.…”

Realistic simulation of the polymers in inkjet process: the investigation of physical phenomena in the ejection of a droplet

“…Pressure pulses affect the fluid towards bottom of the nozzle which can be changed through using several voltages. The experimental results of the droplets ejection caused via double voltages pulses might be discussed through the diffusion of acoustic pressure [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]. In a positive pressure, the arc at the nozzle is created and in other hand, the ejected droplet is disconnected from the nozzle in a negative pressure [44][45][46][47][48][49][50].…”

Superhydrophobic lotus-leaf-like surface made from reduced graphene oxide through soft-lithographic duplication

“…So-lithography with a full range of elastomer-tool-based processing methods, such as microcontact printing (mCP), replica molding (REM), microtransfer molding (mTM), micromolding in capillaries (MIMIC), solvent-assisted micromolding (SAMIM) and other facile approaches, has been well established as one of the most widely used methodologies in microfabrication because of its simplicity, cost-effectiveness and scalability. [20][21][22][23][24] For a specic application to prepare lotus-leaflike surfaces, the replica molding (REM) has been adopted to prepare replicas of the lotus-leaf surfaces with PDMS, 25 and microcontact printing has been performed by using stamps duplicated from lotus leaves and an "ink" of a polymer solution. 26 Although these studies prove the feasibility of the solithography to prepare lotus-leaf-like surfaces, the prepared surfaces only exhibit the replicas of the micron-scale structures of the lotus leaves, and the nano-scale details of the original surfaces are more or less lost in the process.…”