Fast fabrication of integrated surface-relief and particle-diffusing plastic diffuser by use of a hybrid extrusion roller embossing process

Abstract

Most plastic diffusers are either of surface-relief or particle-diffusing types, based on different principles and fabrication methods. This paper reports an innovative extrusion roller embossing process, which enables the fabrication of diffusers with both surface-relief and particle-diffusing functions. An extruder with die is employed to fabricate the thin film of PC/bead composite; the roller micro-embossing process is used to replicate the microstructure onto the surface of PC composite film. A metallic roller mold with microstructures is fabricated using turning process. During the extrusion rolling embossing process, the extruded film of PC with diffusion beads is immediately pressed against the surface of the roller mold. Under the proper processing parameters, the plastic diffusers integrating surface-relief and particle-diffusing functions have been successfully fabricated. The shape, uniformity, and optical properties of fabricated diffuser have been verified. This method shows the great potential for continuous fabrication of high-performance plastic diffusers integrating surface-relief and particle-diffusing functions with high throughput.

Light‐diffusing materials for LED illumination applications: Comparing the effectiveness of two typical light‐diffusing agents

“…High haze combined with high transmittance can be attained by reducing backward scattering and strengthening forward scattering. To achieve this objective, researchers have used many approaches, including roller embossing, the deposition of micrometer dots onto a polymer film surface, and a hybrid extrusion roller embossing process, to prepare LDMs. A diffusing film with excellent diffusing properties can be prepared using these methods; however, the technical conditions are difficult and the methods are only appropriate for the fabrication of flat plates.…”

Extrusion Roller Imprinting with a Variotherm Belt Mold

“…Recently, there also emerges an interest in integrating film extrusion with roller imprinting, leading to the development of the extrusion roller imprinting process [4,[11][12][13]. It is believed that a number of advantages result from such system integration:…”

A facile fabrication of light diffusing film with LDP/polyacrylates composites coating for anti-glare LED application

“…On the basis of different diffusing principles, the light diffusing films can be classified into two types: the particle-diffusing type [9][10][11][12][13] and the surface-relief type [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28].…”

“…When the light passes through the surface with microstructure, a refraction event occurs between the interface of the film and the air, and the incident light is deflected from its course, resulting in light diffusion. There are various methods for fabricating surface-relief type such as replica molding method [14,15], embossing process [7,16,17], lithography [8,18,19], electrospray method [20,21], etching [22,23], holographic technology [24], etc. According to the different preparation methods, the micro-structure can be a hemisphere [14,15,20,21], paraboloidal shape [8], polygonal shape [3,26], pyramid [27,28], cylindrical lens [16], V-shaped mirror [17], or irregular type [4,19,22,23], etc.…”