Comparative study of hot embossed micro structures fabricated by laboratory and commercial environments

Abstract

Hot embossed microstructures fabricated by laboratory and commercial environments have been studied. The laboratory process uses silicon with micropyramid patterns as the mold insert. Fine replication by using Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) has been achieved. The commercial process uses electroplated nickel as the mold insert. Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC), which has a lower glass transition point than PMMA, has been used as the raw material. Fabrication results show that the laboratory process, although taking about 2 hours long per run, can successfully replicate microstructures. The commercial process which takes only 1 minute per run may be fine tuned for good replication. Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) has been used to analyze the fabricated microstructures. It is found that the root mean square (r.m.s.) roughness of PMMA is about 4 nm and that of PVC is about 10-15 nm. Defects including voids and bumps on both PMMA and PVC films have been found.

Precision machining of microstructures on electroless-plated NiP surface for molding glass components

“…The surface of glass pyramids is as smooth as that of the NiP mold. These kinds of micropyramids may be used as new optical elements (Lee et al, 2006;Lin et al, 1998). For example, Fig.…”

Rice and Butterfly Wing Effect Inspired Low Drag and Antifouling Surfaces: A Review

“…Hot embossing was conducted with a master mold heated and pressed into the polymer film. Fabricating embossed surfaces has been the subject of several studies 58,71,72 and techniques depend on the type of master mold and molding materials. Commonly, the master mold is silicon 71,73 and the molding material is polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA).…”

The study of integrated LED-backlight plate fabricated by micromachining technique

“…There are also many patents, which have been proposed for small size LCD backlight panel (Kenmochi 1992;Ciupke et al 1996). An integrated process of silicon anisotropic etching and hot-embossing techniques are applied to fabricate the pyramid arrays for brightness enhancement film (BEF) application of BLU (Lin et al 1998). An integrated polarized lightguide as an LC backlight is designed and fabricated (Chien and Shieh 2004).…”