Numerical simulation of laser/IR assisted micro-embossing

The use of hot embossing for fabrication of polymeric microfluidic devices is gaining a great deal of attention in recent years because it is a relatively simple and low-cost process. Conventional microembossing is a relatively slow process that requires both the mold and the polymer substrate to be heated during embossing and cooled before de-embossing. In order to shorten the cycle time, a laser/IR-assisted microembossing (LIME) process was evaluated in this study. Since laser/IR heats the substrate rapidly and locally, the heating and cooling time can be substantially reduced. Experimental results have shown that both shorter cycle time and good replication accuracy can be achieved. In order to better understand this process, a commercially available FEM code DEFORM® was used for process simulation. Because the temperature distribution inside the polymer substrate is affected by the penetration of radiation energy flux from laser/IR heating, the relationship between penetration energy flux and temperature distribution was implemented into the FEM code. Rheological properties of selected amorphous and crystalline polymers were characterized and incorporated into the FEM code. Two different modes of IR embossing were simulated, in which either a transparent mold or transparent substrate was used. The flow patterns observed in the experiments agreed reasonably well with the DEFORM-3D simulation and a quantitative comparison between experimental and simulation results was made using DEFORM-2D.