Overpressure Contact Printing and Its Applications in the Fabrication of Arrays of Magnetic Rings

218 LLE Review, Volume 99 The elastomeric property of poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) allows stamps made of this polymer to be widely used in replicating patterns with high fidelity through the conformal contact between the substrate and the stamp surfaces.1–3 This unique property is also the origin of stamp deformations. Although the conformal contact is preferred in contact printing, the application of stamp deformations in nanofabrication is severely under investigated. Xia et al. were able to create patterns with size-reduced features by intentionally applying external forces to laterally deform the stamps during contact printing.4 This article shows that not only can size reductions be achieved by applying pressure normal to the substrates during contact printing, but also new patterns different from those features on the stamps can be generated by this patterning approach. This method is referred to as overpressure contact printing (oCP). It is particularly worthwhile to mention that oCP is unique in the fabrication of new features while having the advantage of miniaturization.