Soft Lithography and Variants

The soft elastomeric stamp can be used either as a vehicle for biomolecular surface patterning (an application called microcontact printing (p.CP)) or to create three dimensional reliefs, particularly on polymer materials, as in micromolding in capillaries (MIMIC), microtransfer molding (pTM) or solvent-assisted molding. These techniques have been successfully applied in the fabrication of polymer patterns with dimensions down to the sub-100 nm scale and will be described in this chapter. These patterns have found many relevant applications in the life sciences, where scientists often need to spatially control topographical and chemical properties of surfaces at small scales [1, 5, 6]. 

Generating Micro- and Nanopattems on Polymeric Materials. Edited by A. del Campo and E. Arzt Copyright 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH Co. KGaA, Weinheim ISBN 978-3-527-32508-5 

In the last decade, another prominent application of soft lithography in biology and chemistry has emerged in the fabrication of microfluidic devices, in which control of very small sample volumes and their flow behavior is required [7, 8], Devices made by this technique can be tightly sealed and active components such as valves or pumps can be easily manufactured. This chapter will, however, not cover microfluidic applications since they are outside the scope of this book. 

A large number of review papers can already be found in literature about soft lithography techniques, [1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9-13] and, more specifically, pCP technique [6, 9,13). This chapter focuses on the generation of topographies and is divided into two main parts the first will deal with the key features defining the soft lithography technique and its main application, p.CP the second part will report on some of the attempts to pattern polymers by using soft molds. 

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Martinez E, Samitier J (2011) Soft lithography and variants. In Del Campo A, Arzt E (eds) Generating micro- and nanopattems on polymeric materials. Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, pp 57-68... 

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