Roychowdhury A., Park S.
Louisiana State University, US
Keywords: imprint lithography, polymer membrane
The ability to imitate architecture of naturally existing systems in an economical way is important because this will provide platform for various fundamental and applied research activities. One such structure is a perforated membrane having immense research potential in diverse applications like studying transport behavior in cell biology ,separation of biological vesicles, photonic optics and as components in modular micro/nanofluidic devices. Currently, nanopores fabricated by aluminum anodization or by radiation track-etching in polymer are used for those purposes. However they do not have control of pore location and also suffer from low yield with such techniques. We present a flexible and parallel method to produce such perforated membrane structures at controlled locations down to 1.5 microns in diameter by using all parallel patterning processes which combines imprinting technology with micromachining processes. Si masters are used to emboss thin polymer layers on a Si substrate, free standing nature of the membranes is achieved by selective backside etching of Si using KOH to reach done to the polymer layer. The process can be easily extended down to the sub 100nm nanoscale which will help to open new vistas in several research fields especially in bioanalytic-micro/nano- fluidic devices.
Journal: TechConnect Briefs
Volume: 4, Technical Proceedings of the 2007 NSTI Nanotechnology Conference and Trade Show, Volume 4
Published: May 20, 2007
Pages: 453 - 456
Industry sector: Advanced Materials & Manufacturing
Topics: Advanced Manufacturing, Nanoelectronics
ISBN: 1-4200-6376-6