In this paper, we fabricated a fluorinated organic-inorganic hybrid mold using a nonhydrolytic sol-gel process which can produce a crack-free mold without leaving any trace of solvent. No special chemical treatment of a release layer is needed because the fluorinated hybrid mold has fluorine molecules in the backbone. The other advantages of the hybrid mold are thermal stability over 300 degrees C. The hybrid mold produced from UV nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) was used as a mold for the next UV-NIL and soft lithography without requiring use of an antisticking layer. Various nanometer scale patterns including sub-100 nm patterns could be obtained from the hybrid mold. Nanopatterning processes using this low-cost mold are useful because they preserve the expensive original master.

UV patternable high refractive index inorganic-organic hybrid materials prepared by sol-gel process can be nanoimprinted in order to get photonic crystal nanopatterns. Non-hydrolytic sol-gel process can make a UV curable and relatively high refractive index hybrid material, which can be cured without a significant shrinkage for nanoimprinting. Sol-gel process of heterogeneously functionalized silicon alkoxides can make the organically modified inorganic Si-O-Ti network very well. The UV-based nanoimprint technique utilizes transparent templates and UV curable high refractive index materials to allow pattern replication at room temperature and very low pressure. UV-based nanoimprint technique is an efficient way to fabricate this sort of polymeric photonic crystal nanostructures.

A new organic-inorganic hybrid material (HYBRIMER) has been synthesized homogeneously through a non-hydrolytic sol-gel process. The new HYBRIMER shows efficient index control and minor volume contraction behavior during micro-scale molding. In hybrid materials, the methacrylic end-group is considered suitable for cross-linking during the UV curing step, while the fluorinated functionality is appropriate for refractive index control. As the fluorinated silane contents are varied, the structural evolution and refractive index of the synthesized resin are then controlled (1.469 to 1.513 at 850 nm). A large core optical waveguide structure is formed by these hybrid materials, which exhibit low near IR wavelength absorption. A single material system is applied to both the core and the cladding materials of the optical waveguide. The measured optical propagation loss is lower than 0.25 dB cm 21 .

Active protein micropatterns and microarrays made by selective localization are popular candidates for medical diagnostics, such as biosensors, bioMEMS, and basic protein studies. In this paper, we present a simple fabrication process of thick (approximately 20 microm) protein micropatterning using capillary force lithography with bifunctional sol-gel hybrid materials. Because bifunctional sol-gel hybrid material can have both an amine function for linking with protein and a methacryl function for photocuring, proteins such as streptavidin can be immobilized directly on thick bifunctional sol-gel hybrid micropatterns. Another advantage of the bifunctional sol-gel hybrid materials is the high selective stability of the amine group on bifunctional sol-gel hybrid patterns. Because amine function is regularly contained in each siloxane oligomers, immobilizing sites for streptavidin are widely distributed on the surface of thick hybrid micropatterns. The micropatterning processes of active proteins using efficient bifunctional sol-gel hybrid materials will be useful for the development of future bioengineered systems because they can save several processing steps and reduce costs.