Abstract
Micro molding of polymers is one of the main methods for large mass non-electronic micro devices, in which the micro mold fabrication is very critical. Metallic glass can be thermoplastic forming without any internal stress and shrinkage defects when it is in the supercooled liquid region and it will behave as a sticky meta-stable liquid at the temperature. This paper is to execute superplastic forming to fabricate micro mold using the metallic glass Pd40Cu30Ni10P20 in the supercooled liquid region instead of the lithography, electroplating, and molding (LIGA) processing about electroforming technology. Experimental results verify the feasibility of this method, and successfully duplicate the microstructure to the polymers. Furthermore, the metallic glass mold with varies features has higher strength and longer life than silicon mold. This method provides a new fabrication approach for large quantities of replication of micro-fluidic chip and micro-optics device.
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Acknowledgments
This work was financially supported by the National Key Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (No. 2012CB626809), the Basic & Cutting-edge Technology Research Project of Henan Province (No. 132300410102), and the Key Project of Science & Technology of Education Department of Henan Province (No. 12A430018, 14A130001).
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Zhang, X., Ma, J., Fang, G. et al. Polymer micro molding with bulk metallic glass mold. Microsyst Technol 21, 1453–1457 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-014-2221-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-014-2221-9