서강대학교

초록/요약

Since the invention of atomic force microscope probe, there had been continuous efforts toward discovering new class of materials for atomic force microscope probes. Though some materials such as SU-8 and PMMA have attracted attention due to their ease of fabrication, low cost, and extraordinary mechanical properties, however, was limited in their usage since they were susceptible to tip wear or swelling. Recently, hydrogel AFM probe was developed to overcome these disadvantages envisioning the possibility of polymeric materials for atomic force microscope applications. However, its slow production rate (1 probe/25 min) and low throughput (<10%) restrained the widespread use of hydrogel probes. This thesis reports batch fabrication (~140 at a time) of hydrogel probes with higher throughput (>50%) based on simple micromolding in capillary (MIMIC) technique. First, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) handle and tip/beam molds were fabricated via simple MEMS fabrication and soft lithography. Second, metal line was patterned on the PDMS handle mold by photoresist masking and metal etching. Third, hydrogel pre-polymer was filled between the aligned PDMS handle and tip/beam molds, and photo-crosslinked upon UV irradiation to fabricate tip-integrated hydrogel probes. Finally, hydrogel tip was oxygen plasma etched for probe tip sharpening. This is the first demonstration for batch fabrication of hydrogel probes, enhancing the fabrication costs and time by the factor of 30 and 10, respectively as compared to conventional silicon probe fabrication scheme.