Substrate-induced controllable wrinkling for facile nanofabrication

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Nanotechnology
• Surface Engineering

Background:

• Patterned wrinkles are crucial for various applications, including flexible electronics and biomimetic surfaces.
• Existing methods for creating wrinkles often involve complex procedures or lack precise control over feature size.
• Developing facile and scalable techniques for generating controlled surface topographies is an ongoing challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a straightforward and efficient strategy for fabricating patterned wrinkles on thin films.
• To investigate the role of conductive adhesive tape (CAT) in inducing controlled wrinkling.
• To achieve smaller feature sizes in wrinkled surfaces compared to conventional methods.

Main Methods:

• Adhering a thin poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) film (<82 µm) onto porous conductive adhesive tape (CAT).
• Sputter coating a gold (Au) layer onto the PDMS film under vacuum conditions.
• Utilizing the local stretching effect induced by CAT to control wrinkle formation.

Main Results:

• Successful generation of patterned wrinkles on the Au-PDMS bilayer.
• Demonstration that CAT is the key factor for controlled wrinkle formation due to local PDMS stretching.
• Achieved significantly smaller feature sizes, down to 300 nm, compared to previous wrinkling methods.
• The developed strategy is simpler and more effective than existing techniques.

Conclusions:

• The presented method offers a facile and effective approach for generating patterned wrinkles with controlled feature sizes.
• The use of CAT provides a unique mechanism for inducing local stretching, enabling precise control over wrinkle topography.
• This technique holds potential for applications requiring nanoscale surface patterns, such as in advanced sensors and microdevices.