Creating micro- and nanostructures on tubular and spherical surfaces

Abstract

The authors developed a new technique to create micro- and nanometer scale structures on curved free-standing objects by combining embossing/imprinting lithography approaches with mechanical loadings on elastic films. Embossing/imprinting generates small structures and mechanical loading determines shape or geometry of the final object. As a result, a portion of the tubes with a radius between 0.5 and 3.5 mm and a portion of the spheres with a radius between 2.4 and 7.0 mm were fabricated with grating line features (period of 700 nm) and microlens array features (lens radius of 2.5 μm) atop, respectively. It was found that both static analyses and finite element models can give good estimates on the radii of those curved objects, based on the dimension of the two layers, loading format, as well as mechanic strains. Thus, good control over shape and dimension of the free-standing structure can be achieved.