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Rapid, Controllable Fabrication of Regular Complex Microarchitectures by Capillary Assembly of Micropillars and Their Application in Selectively Trapping/Releasing Microparticles
Author(s) -
Wu Dong,
Wu SiZhu,
Zhao Shuai,
Yao Jia,
Wang JiangNan,
Chen QiDai,
Sun HongBo
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
small
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.785
H-Index - 236
eISSN - 1613-6829
pISSN - 1613-6810
DOI - 10.1002/smll.201201689
Subject(s) - microfabrication , materials science , microfluidics , photolithography , soft lithography , fabrication , capillary action , lithography , nanotechnology , microstructure , pillar , tweezers , maskless lithography , optoelectronics , laser , resist , optics , electron beam lithography , composite material , layer (electronics) , physics , structural engineering , pathology , engineering , medicine , alternative medicine
A simple strategy to realize new controllable 3D microstructures and a novel method to reversibly trapping and releasing microparticles are reported. This technique controls the height, shape, width, and arrangement of pillar arrays and realizes a series of special microstructures from 2‐pillar‐cell to 12 cell arrays, S‐shape, chain‐shape and triangle 3‐cell arrays by a combined top down/bottom up method: laser interference lithography and capillary force‐induced assembly. Due to the inherent features of this method, the whole time is less than 3 min and the fabricated area determined by the size of the laser beam can reach as much as 1 cm 2 , which shows this method is very simple, rapid, and high‐throughput. It is further demonstrated that the ‘mechanical hand’‐like 4‐cell arrays could be used to selectively trap/release microparticles with different sizes, e.g., 1.5, 2, or 3.5 μm, which are controlled by the period of the microstructures from 2.5 to 4 μm, and 6 μm. Finally, the ‘mechanical hand’‐like 4‐cell arrays are integrated into 100 μm‐width microfluidic channels prepared by ultraviolet photolithography, which shows that this technique is compatible with conventional microfabrication methods for on‐chip applications.