Direct Write Photolithography for Cylindrical Tooling Fabrication in Roll to Roll Microcontact Printing

Abstract

The scaleup of microcontact printing (خ¼CP) to a rolltoroll technique for largescale surface patterning requires scalable tooling for continuous pattern printing with خ¼mscale features (e.g., 1–50 خ¼m). Here, we examine the process of creating such a tool using an optical directwrite or “masklessâ€‌ method working on a rotating cylindrical substrate. A predictive model of pattern formation is presented along with experimental results to examine the key control factors for this process. It is shown that factors can be modulated to vary the crosssectional shape in addition to feature height and width. This feature can then be exploited to improve the robustness of the final printing process.