Optimization of the replica molding process of PDMS using pennate diatoms

Abstract

Biomimetic fabrication of nanostructured materials has recently attracted the attention of researchers as a cost-effective and easily applicable method of nanotexturing. Different techniques and materials have been used in order to replicate natural patterns, among which polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS Sylgard 184®) was recently used to replicate the micro- and nanoscale patterns from centric diatoms. In this paper, we test the reproducibility and precision of this approach using various morphologically different diatom species trying to optimize the molding parameters. The optimization process is focused on immobilization of diatoms on the glass support, which serves as a master for templating, as well as on the parameters of PDMS fabrication such as the ratio of the curing agent and elastomer, use of vacuum, curing time and temperature. The results indicate that higher ratios of curing agent and elastomer, longer curing time and lower temperature are the most favorable conditions to obtain negative diatom replicas of good quality with features of 50 nm. Although this method can give very precise results producing high-resolution molds with all micro- and nanostructures replicated, we revealed some limitations regarding the size and morphology of the species used. These results indicate that large round and flat diatom species seem to be more suitable for the cast molding.