Fabrication of Morphology-Controlled Sub-20-nm Polymer Nanotip and Nanopore Arrays Using an Identical Nanograss Mold

Abstract

This paper presents the fabrication of morphology-controlled sub-20-nm polymer nanotip and nanopore arrays using an identical nanograss mold. Cyclic olefin copolymer (COC) plastic surfaces with controllable nanostructural morphologies have been successfully nanoimprinted with different molding temperatures using the identical silicon master mold structure. Low-aspect-ratio sub-20-nm polymer nanopore and nanotip arrays can be fabricated at molding temperatures below the glass temperature of COC plastic. And high-aspect-ratio sub-20-nm polymer nanotip and nanopore arrays can be fabricated at molding temperatures above the glass temperature of COC plastic. It shows that a COC plastic modified from the native contact angel of 90° into a hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surface with a maximum contact angel of 155° by only changing the surface morphologies. Depending on surface nanostructures, the optical transmittance of COC with nanoimprinted surfaces was changed ranging from 86% to 94%. The optical transmittance of the COC chip with double-sided nanostructured surfaces increased from 90% to 95%. The developed technique is simple, ease of fabrication and low cost to realize morphology-controlled sub-20-nm nanotip and nanopore arrays using the identical silicon mold structure. Sub-20-nm polymer nanostructures with different morphologies can be fabricated by varying molding temperatures.