Dynamic and real-time monitoring of the motion state of soft actuators is of great significance for optimizing their performance. However, present noncontact measurement approaches based on diffractive groove arrays fabricated by imprinting have some limitation, e.g., the grooves should be processed before the solidification of soft materials or the depth and period of grooves cannot be flexibly adjusted. Here, a flexible and highefficiency fabrication approach carbon-assisted laser interference lithography (CLIL) for periodical groove structures with structural color is proposed. This technique is to irradiate the interference laser on the PDMS surface coated by a carbon layer, which is used for enhanced laser absorption. The processing parameters are systematically studied and optimized to achieve a bright structural color. Benefiting from the advantages of CLIL, the structural color can be processed on a solidified transparent surface with controllable characteristics such as groove period and depth. Lastly, the motion of an electric-driven actuator can be real-time quantified by calibrating the relationship between the observation angle and the observed structural color.
Femtosecond-laser-induced two-photon polymerization has distinct
advantages in micro-nanofabrication due to its intrinsic
three-dimensional processing capability and high precision with
sub-100 nanometer fabrication resolution. However, the high resolution
causes a drawback in fabricating large-scale structures due to
unacceptably long processing times. To solve this problem, we applied
the patterned focus as the basic element for scanning processing.
Theoretically, the relationship between patterned-focus scanning
parameters and the uniformity of scanned light field was analyzed and
optimized. Experimentally, we quantitatively investigated the
relationship between the microstructure surface quality and the
parameters of patterned-focus scanning. Based on above, we put forward
a hybrid method that combines the femtosecond laser patterned exposure
with direct-writing fabrication to rapidly fabricate large-scale
microfluidic devices for various practical applications.
A ring-shaped focus, such as a focused vortex beam, has played an important role in microfabrication and optical tweezers. The shape and diameter of the ring-shaped focus can be easily adjusted by the topological charge of the vortex. However, the flow energy is also related to the topological charge, making the individual control of diameter and flow energy of the vortex beam impossible. Meanwhile, the shape of the focus of the vortex beam remains in the hollow ring. Expanding the shape of focus of structural light broadens the applications of the vortex beam in the field of microfabrication. Here, we proposed a ring-shaped focus with controllable gaps by multiplexing the vortex beam and annular beam. The multiplexed beam has several advantages, such as the diameter and flow energy of the focal point can be individually controlled and are not affected by the zero-order beam, and the gap size and position are controllable.
We propose a new, to the best of our knowledge, technique to capture single particles in real-time in a microfluidic system with controlled flow using micro-pillar traps fabricated by one-step. The micro pillars are fabricated in parallel by femtosecond multi-foci laser beams, which are generated by multiplexing gratings. As the generation process does not need integration loops, the pattern and the intensity distribution of the foci array can be controlled in real-time by changing the parameters of gratings. The real-time control of the foci array enables rapidly fabricating microtraps in the microchannel with adjustment of the pillar spaces and patterns according to the sizes and shapes of target particles. This technology provides an important step towards using platforms based on single-particle analysis, and it paves the way for the development of innovative microfluidic devices for single-cell analysis.
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