Nickel stamp fabrication and hot embossing for mass-production of micro/nano combined structures using anodic aluminum oxide

Abstract

Recently, "micro/nano combined structure" has attracted many researchers' attentions due to its high potential in various research fields and applications such as biomimetics, tissue engineering, micro systems for biochemical analysis and so forth. The present paper proposes a simple and promising method for mass-production of the micro/nano combined structure, in particular, nano dimple array with micro structures with cost-effective procedures. Three major procedures of (a) master template fabrication; (b) nickel electroforming onto the master template; (c) replication by hot embossing process, are employed: the master template is fabricated by utilizing an anodic aluminium oxide (AAO) process and UV lithography technique; nickel stamp is then obtained by means of electroforming onto the master template; finally, micro/nano combined structures are moulded on a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) substrate using the nickel stamp via hot embossing. So replicated micro/nano combined structures turns out to be quite successful according to experimental observation via scanning electron microscope (SEM) and atomic force microscope (AFM).