Soft lithography

In technology, soft lithography is a family of techniques for fabricating or replicating structures using "elastomeric stamps, molds, and conformable photomasks". It is called "soft" because it uses elastomeric materials, most notably PDMS.

Soft lithography is generally used to construct features measured on the micrometer to nanometer scale. According to Rogers and Nuzzo (2005), development of soft lithography expanded rapidly from 1995 to 2005. Soft lithography tools are now commercially available.

Types

• PDMS stamp
• Microcontact printing
• Multilayer soft lithography
• Nanosphere lithography
• Patterning by etching at the nanoscale

Advantages

Soft lithography has some unique advantages over other forms of lithography (such as photolithography and electron beam lithography). They include the following:

• Lower cost than traditional photolithography in mass production
• Well-suited for applications in biotechnology
• Well-suited for applications in plastic electronics
• Well-suited for applications involving large or nonplanar (nonflat) surfaces
• More pattern-transferring methods than traditional lithography techniques (more "ink" options)
• Does not need a photo-reactive surface to create a nanostructure
• Smaller details than photolithography in laboratory settings (~30 nm vs ~100 nm). The resolution depends on the mask used and can reach 6 nm.

See also

• Nanolithography

References

Further reading

• Xia, Y.; Whitesides, G. M. (1998). "Soft Lithography". Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 37 (5): 551–575. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1521-3773(19980316)37:5<550::AID-ANIE550>3.0.CO;2-G. PMID 29711088. Archived from the original on 2011-08-12.
• Xia, Y.; Whitesides, G. M. (1998). "Soft Lithography. In". Annu. Rev. Mater. Sci. 28: 153–184. Bibcode:1998AnRMS..28..153X. doi:10.1146/annurev.matsci.28.1.153.
• Quake, S. R.; Scherer, A. (2000). "From micro- to nanofabrication with soft materials". Science. 290 (5496): 1536–1540. Bibcode:2000Sci...290.1536Q. doi:10.1126/science.290.5496.1536. PMID 11090344. S2CID 1386132.
• Rogers, J. A.; Nuzzo, R. G. (2005). "February). Recent progress in soft lithography. In". Materials Today. 8 (2): 50–56. doi:10.1016/S1369-7021(05)00702-9.

1. Polydimethylsiloxane
2. Nanolithography
3. Multilayer soft lithography
4. Photolithography
5. Extreme ultraviolet lithography
6. Lithography
7. George M. Whitesides
8. Microarray
9. Microcontact printing
10. SU-8 photoresist
11. Nanoimprint lithography
12. Resist (semiconductor fabrication)
13. Lab-on-a-chip
14. Lung-on-a-chip
15. Nanosphere lithography
16. Contact lithography
17. Adhesion
18. PDMS stamp
19. Bio-MEMS
20. John A. Rogers