Fabrication of strain tunable infrared frequency selective surfaces on electrostrictive poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) copolymer films using a stencil mask method

We introduce a stencil mask method to fabricate metallic patch arrays on the electrostrictive poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) copolymer films. The resulting frequency selective surfaces exhibit resonance responses in the infrared region. Furthermore, the resonant frequency can be tuned by the strain change in the copolymer films. The results demonstrate that the stencil mask method is useful for depositing metallic patterns on a subset of substrates such as polymers that would be damaged by solvents used in conventional photolithography techniques. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.