Polymeric microneedles fabricated by microinjection molding techniques have been demonstrated using Topas Ò COC as the molding plastic material. Open-channel microneedles with cross-sectional area of 100 lm · 100 lm were designed and fabricated on top of a shank of 4.7 mm in length, 0.6 mm in width, and 0.5 mm in depth. The tip of the microneedle has a round shape with a radius of 125 lm as limited by the drill used in fabricating the mold insert. The injection molding parameters including clamping force, shot size, injection velocity, packing pressure, and temperature were characterized in order to achieve best reproducibility. Experimentally, a fabricated microneedle was successfully injected into a chicken leg and a beef liver freshly bought from a local supermarket and about 0.04 lL of liquid was drawn from these tissues immediately. This new technology allows mass production of microneedles at a low cost for potential biomedical applications.

We have demonstrated lithography-free, simple, and large area fabrication method for subwavelength antireflection structures (SAS) to achieve low reflectance of silicon (Si) surface. Thin film of Pt/Pd alloy on a Si substrate is melted and agglomerated into hemispheric nanodots by thermal dewetting process, and the array of the nanodots is used as etch mask for reactive ion etching (RIE) to form SAS on the Si surface. Two critical parameters, the temperature of thermal dewetting processes and the duration of RIE, have been experimentally studied to achieve very low reflectance from SAS. All the SAS have well-tapered shapes that the refractive index may be changed continuously and monotonously in the direction of incident light. In the wavelength range from 350 to 1800 nm, the measured reflectance of the fabricated SAS averages out to 5%. Especially in the wavelength range from 550 to 650 nm, which falls within visible light, the measured reflectance is under 0.01%.

This study investigates the effects of adding injection–compression to rapid heat cycle molding (RHCM) (rapid heat cycle injection–compression molding (RICM)) on the physical quality and optical anisotropy of a molded light guide plate (LGP). Transcription ratio of microstructure, uniformity of part thickness and birefringence were experimentally evaluated on a 7 inch LGP of nominal thickness of 1.12 mm (including a microstructure array of 30 µm diameter and 14 µm height). The designed mold was equipped with rapid heating and compressing facilities and a microstructured nickel stamper was fabricated by UV LIGA process. In addition, to investigate the efficacy of RICM, experiments involving conventional injection molding (CIM), ICM, and RHCM were conducted in parallel with RICM using the same mold. RHCM and RICM yielded excellent transcription ratios for the microstructure, while CIM and RICM provided high thickness uniformity and low birefringence. Thus, RICM obtains high transcription ratio of microstructure, uniform thickness and low birefringence.

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Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG), which utilize contact electrification of two different material surfaces accompanied by electrical induction has been proposed and is considered as a promising energy harvester. Researchers have attempted to form desired structures on TENG surfaces and successfully demonstrated the advantageous effect of surface topography on its electrical output performance. In this study, we first propose the structured Al (SA)-assisted TENG (SA-TENG), where one of the contact layers of the TENG is composed of a structured metal surface formed by a metal-to-metal (M2M) imprinting process. The fabricated SA-TENG generates more than 200 V of open-circuit voltage and 60 µA of short-circuit current through a simple finger tapping motion. Given that the utilization of the M2M imprinting process allows for the rapid, versatile and easily accessible structuring of various metal surfaces, which can be directly used as a contact layer of the TENG to substantially enhance its electrical output performance, the present study may considerably broaden the applicability of the TENG in terms of its fabrication standpoint.

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