Abstract
The nanoimprint replication of biomimetic nanostructures can be interesting for a wide range of applications. We demonstrate the process chain for Morpho-blue-inspired nanostructures, which are especially challenging for the nanoimprint process, since they consist of multilayer undercut structures, which typically cannot be replicated using nanoimprint lithography. To achieve this, we used a specially made, proprietary imprint material to firstly allow successful stamp fabrication from an undercut master structure, and secondly to enable UV-based nanoimprinting using the same material. Nanoimprinting was performed on polymer substrates with stamps on polymer backplanes to be compatible with roller-based imprinting processes. We started with single layer undercut structures to finally show that it is possible to successfully replicate a multilayer undercut stamp from a multilayer undercut master and use this stamp to obtain multilayer undercut nanoimprinted samples.
Highlights
In the course of evolution, nature has developed a broad range of nanostructured surfaces with many different purposes: to optimize friction behavior (e.g., [1,2,3]) or the behavior of liquids (e.g., [4,5]), to achieve antimicrobial (e.g., [6,7]) or antireflective effects (e.g., [8,9,10]) and to achieve decorative effects (e.g., [11,12,13,14]), just to name a few
Due to the fact that nanoimprinting can—in a single process step—replicate complex multilevel structures [1,24,27,28], it is ideally suited for the replication of such biomimetic or bio-inspired nanostructures
Defects on the bottom can be observed, which are, related to the defective master which was used for these experiments and are not related to the undercut structures
Summary
In the course of evolution, nature has developed a broad range of nanostructured surfaces with many different purposes: to optimize friction behavior (e.g., [1,2,3]) or the behavior of liquids (e.g., [4,5]), to achieve antimicrobial (e.g., [6,7]) or antireflective effects (e.g., [8,9,10]) and to achieve decorative effects (e.g., [11,12,13,14]), just to name a few. A big challenge for nanoimprinting, is the replication of undercut features, since it is usually not possible to remove the stamp from such features, especially if they are of nanoscale. It has, been shown in the literature that this can be achieved for larger features in the several μm range [29,30]
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