Background

Presented here is the novel mechanical application of adhesive hydrophobic materials to substrates, the patterning of these materials, and the controlled dip-coating of the resulting patterned substrates to allow the control of the spatial and volumetric attributes of liquid droplets. By controlling the speed with which the substrates are dip-coated, and the viscosity of the polymer bath, fine control over the volumes of liquid that are deposited at particular locations on the substrate is obtained.

These techniques may be utilized in a variety of applications including microlens arrays, waveguides, bonding, and fluidic handling.

Technology Description

Microlens arrays

The fabrication of polymer microlens arrays having square and circular footprints and diameters from 10mm to 500 mm has been achieved with full spatial and volumetric control of the lens. Arrays of plano-convex microlenses have been fabricated with f^#s of less than 1.4, and uniformities better than s/f~1.8% (s/f= standard deviation of the focal length divided by the focal length) . Arrays of doubly-convex microlens with f^#s of 1.2 have also been achieved. Finally, lenses with multiple f^#s placed in close proximity to each other have also been demonstrated. The lenses are environmentally stable, showing no change in the average f^# after nine months of storage at room temperature. The average f^#s of fast lenses are reproducible to within 3.5%.

The process is low cost and performed at room temperature: no multiple alignments, etch-transfer processes, or heating of the substrate is required.

Applications: Display systems, fiber bundle coupling to optelectric devices, free space optoelectronic communication systems.

Waveguides

Waveguides have been formed by the same method used to create microlens arrays, including arbitrary shapes and corners. Performance of these waveguides has not yet been well characterized.

Applications: Fiber coupling to optoelectric devices, potential multimode and single mode fiber coupling to optoelectric devices through self-aligned waveguide formation.

Bump bonding and interconnects

Self-assembled polymer bump bonds 20mm in diameter on exposed aluminum pads has been demonstrated in addition to the formation of multiple interconnects between two mutually perpendicular chips. As polymer, and not solder, forms the bump bonds there is no need for any lithographic steps, reflow, or electroplating.

Applications: Flip chip bonding, interconnections between perpendicular chips.

Microfluidic handling

As an offshoot of the work to develop microlens arrays, it has been observed that ~50fL aliquots of liquid may conveniently be transferred. Although this is believed to be reasonably uniform over a large array, this line of investigation has not been explored in depth.

Applications: Any application requiring small volumes of liquid delivery, such as DNA sequencing, drug delivery, and the like.

Patent Status

Inventors

• Esener, Sadik C.
• Hartmann, Daniel M.
• Kibar, Osman

Other Information

Contact

University of California, San Diego Technology Transfer Office / invent@ucsd.edu / tel: View Phone Number. Please reference Tech ID #21104.

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