Soft Lithography is a opportune form
of micro machining. This means that
the feature size is in the order of 10
microns. Two fabrication techniques
used in soft lithography are microprinting
which is rolling a stamp over a
substrate similar to early printing
techniques. The other technique used
to fabricate is called molding, this
process involves pouring PDMS
(Polydimethylsiloxane) into a master
mold and allowing it to cure creating a
negative of the master mold. They
used PDMS because of its low surface
free energy; this means that it is able
to conform to very small features
patterns on a substrate.
We demonstrated the second
fabrication technique, more specifically
known as Replica Molding (REM), in
Professor Madou’s lab.