UV-embossed inorganic-organic hybrid nanopillars for bioapplications

We demonstrate rapid and maskless wafer-scale fabrication of inorganic-organic hybrid nanopillars for microfluidic and mass spectrometric applications. The nanopillar features are transferred from a black silicon master to the hybrid material by UV-embossing with a composite stamp made of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)/hard-PDMS (h-PDMS), which allows accurate transfer of structures in the 100 nm size range. The nanopillar embossing process is extremely simple and well suited for cheap wafer-scale prototyping, as the process does not require expensive masks or stamps and even works with a standard office lamp as the exposure source. The pillars can also be fabricated on a wide variety of substrates because the hybrid material is solvent-free. The use of the hybrid nanopillars as a hydrophobic/philic platforms and as sample plates in surface assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry is demonstrated.