Fabrication of Micro-Scale Wrinkles on a Curved Surface using Weak-Polymerization and Surface Shrinkage

摘要

We proposed a new process to fabricate micro-scale polymer wrinkles on a curved surface. A UV-curable resin layer on a substrate is weakly polymerized by a small dose of UV-light. By the exposure, there is a curing gradient through the thickness in the resin layer; fully-polymerized zone on the surface and sol-gel inside. Then, it is cured completely under temperature of 28°C. According to the different states between surface and inside of the layer, a compressive force is generated on the surface zone during a fully-curing process. Through this work, regular surface wrinkles are generated on the surface with a width of around 20 μm. To reduce the total processing time, an approach of thermal curing after weak-polymerization is proposed. We believed that the proposed method can be applied to make wrinkles on arbitrary-shaped surface for applications to diverse research fields such as heat transfer and catalyst enhancement.