NILcure® UV-imprint resins
About
The NILcure® resin portfolio comprises photopolymers for UV imprint lithography. The resins of this versatile product line are customizable to a wide range of customer-specific applications due to the tunability of mechanical, chemical and optical properties.
Description
NILcure® resins are multicomponent photopolymer systems comprising poly -ether, -ester or -urethane acrylate oligomers as binders and acrylate- or thiol-monomers for reactive diluents as well as acrylate functionalized surfactants for adhesion control and free-radical photo-initiators for UV-curing. By choice and ratio of these components a wide variety of resin properties can be customized.
Tunable properties of NILcure® resins:
Viscosity of the uncured pre-polymer
Mechanical properties of the UV-cured polymer starting from stiff going to elastic
Surface energy ranging from super-hydrophobic to super-hydrophilic
Optical properties –refractive index and optical dispersion
Gas and moisture permeability
Dielectric constant
UV/weathering and scratch/abrasion resistance for harsh outdoor conditions
NILcure® resins are applicable by e.g. slot-die coating, spin coating, gravure printing and inkjet printing. They show strong adhesion to silicon, glass, metals various polymer substrates and at one hand and excellent anti-sticking properties to stamp materials at the other.
This enables their usage in UV-imprint processes for the roll-to-roll manufacturing of functional surfaces based on (high aspect ratio) micro- and nanostructures at high throughput.
NILcure® resins can be used as stamp resins or product resins and selected NILcure® resins show self-replicability: UV-imprints in these resins can be directly used as polymer stamps for imprinting the same or other resins of the NILcure® portfolio
Applications:
Capillary force driven microfluidic devices for e.g. point-of-care diagnostics
Water and dirt repellent surfaces (lotus-effect)
Anti-reflective surface coatings (moth-eye effect)
Diffractive light guiding films
Refractive free-form micro-optical elements
Viscous-drag reducing films (shark-skin effect)
Non-toxic anti-bacterial surfaces
Dielectric layer
https://www.joanneum.at/materials/produkte/nilcure/
Technical specifications:
Tunable properties:
Viscosity: 10 mPas – 10 Pas
Young’s Modulus: 5 MPa – 5 GPa
Tensile strength: 5 – 40 MPa
Elongation at break: 1 % – 100 %
Surface energy: 15 mN/m 70 mN/m
Refractive Index nD25: 1.4 – 1.8
Case study:
A user needs a UV imprint resin with excellent weathering stability and scratch resistance for use in flexible anti-reflective and easy-to-clean films on PV-modules. The resin should allow the nanoimprinting of nanostructures known to be antireflective such as nanospike arrays, moth-eye structures, velvet structures and the like.
A first possibility is the NILcure®_outdoor resin with high imprint fidelity, full transparency in the visible spectrum and proven excellent weathering and abrasion resistance for outdoor applications developed for PET substrates. If the customer wants another substrate or direct application of the nanostructured NILcure®_outdoor resin layer onto his PV-modules, the resin formulation can be adjusted to optimize its adhesion to the surface PV-module.
After selection/adaptation of the NILcure®_outdoor resin we will fabricate antireflective nanostructures by batch imprinting with a stamp that is provided by the user. Alternatively, such nanostructures can also be fabricated in the target resin via R2R UV-nanoimprinting, if a large area stamp is available.
See Flexible Microoptics Fab (FLEXµOPT)
Optional:
- J. Götz et al., ACS Appl. Nano Mater 5, 3434–3449 (2022)
- I. R. Howell, et al., Optics & Laser Technology 114, 107101 (2021)
- M. Leitgeb et al., ACS Nano 10 (5), 4926, (2016) https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.5b07411
- D. Nees et al., Proc. SPIE Advanced Lithography, Vol. 9777, DOI: 10.1117/12.2218134 (2016)
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