Direct fabrication of rigid microstructures on a metallic roller using a dry film resist

This paper presents a novel method to fabricate a metallic roller mold with microstructures on its surface using a dry film resist (DFR). The DFR is laminated uniformly onto the curvy surface of a copper roller. After that, the micro-scale photoresist on the surface of the roller can be patterned by non-planar lithography using a flexible film photomask, followed by ferric chloride wet etching to obtain the desired microstructures. This method overcomes the uniformity issue of photoresist coating on rollers, and solves the molds sliding problem during the embossing process because the microstructures are fabricated directly on the roller surface. Furthermore, the rigid metallic roller mold has excellent strength durability and temperature endurance, which can be used in roller hot embossing with a high embossing pressure. The fabricated microstructure roller mold is used as a mold in the hybrid extrusion roller embossing process and successfully fabricates uniform micro-scale prominent line arrays on PC films. This result proves that the roller fabricated by this method can be successfully used in roller embossing for microstructure mass production. The excellent flatness of dry film resist laminating is the key in this fabrication process. The flexible film photomask can be easily designed using CAD software; this roller fabrication method enhances the design flexibility and reduces the cost and time.