Electrowetting assisted air detrapping in transfer micromolding for difficult-to-mold microstructures

As a widely applicable process for fabricating micro- or nanostructures, micromolding in atmosphere would require the removal or minimization of air-trapping in mold cavities so as to fill the liquid prepolymer fully into the mold for generating an exact polymer duplicate. This has been difficult, if not impossible, especially for a mold with high aspect ratio, varying size/shape, or isolated cavities because the air can be trapped inside such mold cavities in most variants of the molding process. This paper presents an electrowetting assisted transfer micromolding process to solve this problem. A feeding blade continuously supplies a UV-curable prepolymer over a dielectric-coated conductive mold placed on a progressively advancing stage. A voltage applied to the electrode pair composed of the feeding blade and mold generates an electrowetting of the prepolymer to the mold. The electrowetting allows for the three-phase contact line to pass progressively along the sidewalls and bottoms of the cavities, completely pushing out the air initially occupying the cavities, or generates an electrocapillary force large enough to pull the prepolymer deeply into the mold by compressing the air already trapped inside the cavities to a minimized volume. An experiment has been performed for micromolding with deep cavities of various shapes and sizes, demonstrating an essential improvement in the structural integrity of the polymer duplicates.