Generation of Hierarchically Ordered Structures on a Polymer Film by Electrohydrodynamic Structure Formation

The extensive applications of hierarchical structures in optoelectronics, micro/nanofluidics, energy conservation, etc., have led to the development of a variety of approaches for their fabrication, which can be categorized as bottom-up or top-down strategies. Current bottom-up and top-down strategies bear a complementary relationship to each other due to their processing characteristics, i.e., the advantages of one method correspond to the disadvantages of the other, and vice versa. Here we propose a novel method based on electrohydrodynamic structure formation, aimed at combining the main advantages of the two strategies. The method allows the fabrication of a hierarchically ordered structure with well-defined geometry and high mechanical durability on a polymer film, through a simple and low-cost process also suitable for mass-production. In this approach, upon application of an electric field between a template and a substrate sandwiching an air gap and a polymer film, the polymer is pulled toward the template and further flows into the template cavities, resulting in a hierarchical structure with primary and secondary patterns determined by electrohydrodynamic instability and by the template features, respectively. In this work, the fabrication of a hierarchical structure by electrohydrodynamic structure formation is studied using numerical simulations and experimental tests. The proposed method is then employed for the one-step fabrication of a hierarchical structure exhibiting a gradual transition in the periodicity of the primary structure using a slant template and a flat polymer film, which presents an excellent performance on controllable wettability.