Industrial Polymer Microfabrication and Customized Manufacturing Combining Additive Manufacturing and Injection Molding

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This program proposes the merging of two key polymer manufacturing processes currently of tremendous industrial and academic interest: additive manufacturing (commonly referred to as 3D printing) and injection molding. Polymer based micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) uses traditional microfabrication technologies such as lithography, etching and plasma based processes. These polymer MEMS produce products such as disposable sensors, microfluidics, and superhydrophobic surfaces which are in general high value compared to most plastic products, but very inexpensive compared to silicon or glass based microfabricated products. While the quality can be extremely high, the cost structures of these traditional micromanufacturing techniques makes it more challenging to develop the low-cost and disposable devices that are the biggest advantage of polymer based microfabrication. However, newer advances in the field of 3D printing offers the possibility of producing highly complex micro and nanostructures dimensionally structured to provide novel properties compared to bulk polymer materials. These new functions include self-cleaning surfaces, anti-wetting materials and complex optical systems beyond what traditional lithography can achieve. 3D printing is tremendously exciting because it lowers the barriers to implement new design ideas or concepts without huge infrastructure investments to make the parts. However it is best for single part or low volume fabrication because the time to produce a structure is constant independent of production volume, rather than benefiting from economies of scale. On the other side of polymer microfabrication, injection molding is by far the most commercially important manufacturing technique and the lowest cost when working with high volume production (tens of thousands to millions of parts) and is the main driver behind the ubiquity of plastic products in our daily lives. It is economically unfeasible to apply injection molding to small volume runs due to the high costs of making the initial mold for the parts (potentially 10's to 100's of thousands of dollars for the mold). This research program will combine the low cost prototyping and tremendous design flexibility of additive manufacturing, and apply these 3D printed parts as direct or indirect molds for subsequent micro-injection molding. The primary aim is to investigate how to merge the benefits of these manufacturing technologies and develop new manufacturing techniques for microstructured polymer surfaces.  A secondary focus is the application of these microstructured surfaces to applications such as gecko-inspired adhesives and self-cleaning surfaces. In focusing on this research, it is also hoped that the rapid replication of a 3D printed part could be achieved with minimal extra costs, or mass customization of new products and materials can be achieved.*** **