Shrink Polymer Micro Sensors for Detection of Water Pollutants

Friday, Sept. 23rd, 3pm

375 Borlaug Hall and via Zoom

Dr. Tianhong Cui
UMN Dept. of Mechanical Engineering

Abstract

Polymer shrinkage becomes a new approach to do lithography and generate smaller structures by reforming larger pre-patterned structures. The facile polymer fabrication approach by embossing and thermoplastic shrinkage aims to do lithography in a nanoscale or reduce the feature size and dramatically increase the aspect ratio of imprinted microstructures. The shrinkage capability of embossed microstructures is obtained by molding at low temperatures for less cycle time. Embossed patterns are activated for shrinkage by removing projected structures and heating at higher temperatures. The final structures are defined with the shape of removed materials before shrinking polymer materials. Both two- and three-dimensional embossed structures were successfully shrunk into much smaller scale. This polymer-shrinking process brings a new way to extend the fabrication capability of polymer embossing process towards MEMS devices. This talk will present shrink polymer for nanolithography, high-aspect-ratio microstructures, and micro sensors for detection of water pollutants.