Roll-to-Roll Fabrication of Residual-Layer-Free Micro/Nanoscale Membranes with Precise Pore Architectures and Tunable Surface Textures

Many technologies are increasingly dependent on the development of membranes with highly precise pore size and spatial order. While mold-based lithographic techniques are adopted for the fabrication of such ordered porous membranes, their transition toward large-scale fabrication remains challenging because of manual and laborious process requirements. To facilitate the transition from batch to continuous membrane production, a novel roll-to-roll (R2R) process was designed based on an established capillary-driven molding technique. Establishing conformal contact between patterned mold and web support and the capillary filling of the UV-curable resin forms the basis of the molding process, which is automated by the R2R platform with precise positioning and reproducible contact force. This results in the in situ formation of residual-layer-free membranes without additional complex, expensive etching steps and, more importantly, with high throughput up to 3000 mm2/min. The versatile process allows the combin...