Laser-Assisted Thermal Imprinting of Microlens Arrays—Effects of Pressing Pressure and Pattern Size

Polymer films with nano- or microstructured surfaces have been widely applied to optical devices, bioplates, and printed electronics. Laser-assisted thermal imprinting (LATI), in which a laser directly heats the surfaces of a mold and a thermoplastic polymer, is one of the high-throughput methods of replicating nano- or microstructures on polymer films. Only the surfaces of the mold and polymer film are heated and cooled rapidly, therefore it is possible to replicate nano- or microstructures on polymer films more rapidly than by using conventional thermal nanoimprinting. In this study, microlens arrays (MLAs) were replicated on polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) films using LATI, and the effects of the pressing pressure (10−50 MPa) and the pattern size (33- and 5-μm pitch) of the MLA on the filling ratio were investigated by analyzing a microlens replicated using different laser-irradiation times (0.1−2 ms). The filling ratio increased with increasing pressing pressure and laser-irradiation time in the replication of MLAs with varying sizes, while the flow of the PMMA varied with the pressing pressure and laser-irradiation time. It was found that during filling, the shape of the polymer cross-sectional surface demonstrated a double and single peak in the 33- and 5-μm-pitch patterns, respectively. This was because the depth of the heated area in the 33-μm-pitch pattern was smaller than the pattern size, whereas that of the 5-μm-pitch pattern was comparable to (or larger) than the pattern size.