Photolithographic Feature Fabrication on Acrylic Substrates with Tight Tolerance Height Requirement

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This project aims to produce an optical spacer system compatible with a novel lensless microscope system commercialized by Alentic Microscience Inc. The spacers need to be both exceptionally thin and high tolerance (2.5 micrometers with less than 1% deviation from nominal across the imaging area) and produced on an acrylic substrate initially, but ideally compatible with other transparent polymer substrates. This exceptionally tight tolerance must be achieved without any substantial damage or roughness increase of the underlying acrylic substrate to be functional for the target application of lensless microscropy. Two main manufacturing techniques will be applied - direct photolithography of a thin-film epoxy layer onto acrylic substrates via traditional spin-coating, and a two-photon direct write lithography system recently acquired by the University of Alberta. The traditional lithography approach is in theory more scalable, but has not been characterized for the exceptional uniformity required by the imaging application. The two photon lithography approach may be able to produce the uniformity required, but can only pattern over very small areas (~1 cm^2). As such, proof-of-principle tests and replication using soft lithography molding techniques would be attempted in these cases to determine feasibility to up-scale high quality master templates for this production purpose. The result of the project would be a series of process steps that can be adapted by Alentic Microscience Inc. to best approach their production requirements for lensless imaging.