Development of a Gasbag-Roller-Assisted Ink Roller Imprinting Process and Its Application

Roller imprinting has attracted grate attention due to its rapid, continuous nature; it is especially good for mass production. But there are still some problems need to be improved, such as warpage im roller hot embossing or residual layer. In roller UV inprinting This study is devoted to developing gasbag-roller-assisted ink roller imprinting process and its application.
The technique combines ink roller imprinting technique, gasbag-roller press and PDMS (Polydimethylsiloxane) flexible mold to replicate patterns on the polymeric film. Due to the isotropic pressure provided by the gasbag roller, the contact area between the mold and the substrate is increased and the uniformity of the imprinting pressure is enhanced. The photoresist is coated onto the PDMS mold roller surface by PVA (Polyvinyl acetate) foam roller. The polymer film is fed in-between gasbag-roller and PDMS mold roller, and the photoresist is then transferred from PDMS mold to PC (polycarbonate) film. Finally, the photoresist is cured by UV light. The micro-hole array is successfully fabricated on the PC film.
The gasbag-roller-assisted ink roller imprinting technique is further employed to manufacture color filter, which consists of black matrix and RGB (red, green, blue) color block structures. The black matrix is imprinted on PC film first. The red, blue, and green blocks with dimension of 130 × 300 μm2 are precisely imprinted on the PC film after the roller/film alignments are verified with a high-resolution camera. The color filters with dimension of 250 × 400 mm2 have been fabricated. The variation in brightness between colors is less than 7%. This proves the potential of applying gasbag-roller-assisted ink roller imprinting technique on industry.