Injection molding inserts
Characteristics:
Master with a thickness range 3 - 8 mm are being used on injection molding machines. Preferably called: “ Inserts ”. Large area inserts usually have a more massive backplate in order to avoid bending while de-molding. In addition to the higher thickness, inserts are being kept in place with a holding down clamp around its perimeter. Excellent thermal coupling is of great importance to achieve uniform molding behavior.
1: Injection mold insert with various WEDM features and wear-resistant TiN-coating.
2: Set of injection molds with 2-level microfluidic design, ready-to-mount.
3: Injection mold with 2-level microfluidic design and various mechanical features
4: Injection mold with 2-level microfluidic design and drafted sidewalls on all microstructures.
5: Close-up on 2-level microfluidic design with total pattern height 350µm
6: Injection mold with 2-level microfluidic design and drafted sidewalls on all microstructures.
7: Injection mold with 1-level microfluidic design (master provided by customer).
8: Injection mold with 1-level microfluidic design.
9: Injection mold with 1-level microfluidic design and various mechanical features
10: Injection molded disposable platforms in medical-grade polymer
11: Injection molded disposable platforms in medical-grade polymer
12: Set of injection molds with 2-level microfluidic designs
13: Set of injection molds with 2-level microfluidic designs and wear-resistant TiN-coating
14: Nickel-insert with 350µm high protruding features.
15: Injection mold with 200nm feature size (PHABLE).
16: Injection mold with 250nm feature size (PHABLE).
17: Final inspection (AFM-plot) of nano-optical grating on Ni-mold
18: SEM-image of 70nm dot-array on a Ni/Ir hybrid-mold (SEM courtesy of Eulitha AG)
19: Nickel-Mold with array of fresnel lens-pairs
20: Set of injection molds with cylindrical lens-arrays
21: Set of injection molds with cylindrical microlens arrays
22: Injection molded polymer parts with cylindrical microlenses
23: CD-shim formatted injection mold with sub-micrometer grating-pattern
24: CD-shim formatted injection mold with sub-micrometer test-pattern
25: Injection molded polymer parts with sub-micrometer test-pattern
26: Injection molded polymer parts with sub-micrometer test-pattern
27: Injection molded polymer parts with sub-micrometer test-pattern
28: 2-level microfluidic mold-insert with massive Ni-backplate
29: Set of 2-level microfluidic mold-insert with massive Ni-backplate
30: Injection mold insert with 50µm deep pattern and drafted sidewalls
31: SEM-image of test-pattern (photoresist) with vertical sidewalls and perfect pattern definition
32: SEM-image of dot-pattern (photoresist) with drafted sidewalls
33: SEM-image of alignment feature (photoresist) with drafted sidewalls
34: Microscopy inspection of Nickel injection mold with microlens-pattern after 700'000 shots !!
35: Profilometer-scan of microlens-pattern on resist-master
36: Surface-scan (interferometry) of Ni/steel-hybrid mold
37: Contact-angle analysis after surface-treatment with anti-sticking coating on mold-insert.
Material: EF-Nickel or Steel
Applications: Nano- and microoptics, microfluidics.
1. Convert customer data into Maskdesign
2. Fabrication of maskset
3. Lithography on substrates =» resist-master
4. Prepare the master for Ni-electroforming =» Nickel-master (pattern inverted / mirrored)
5. Removal of wafer and resist
6. Mechanical post-processing the geometry of the insert for mounting in the injection molding machine.
1. Prepare the customer-substrate for Ni-electroforming =» Nickel-master
2. Removal of wafer and resist
3. Mechanical post-processing the geometry of the insert for mounting in the injection molding machine.
1. Prepare the customer-substrate for Ni-electroforming =» Nickel-master
2. Removal of wafer and resist
3. Prepare Nickel-master for Ni-electroforming =» Nickel-copy
4. Mechanical post-processing the geometry of the insert for mounting in the injection molding machine.
Specifications:
- Pattern size range ≥ 70nm
- Pattern height/uniformity = 50nm - 500µm / 3 – 5%
- EXCLUSIVE: Adjustable drafted sidewalls up to 15° (easy demolding)
- Manufacturing according to adapted LiGA-process
- Multilevel pattern available (micro+nano)
- Alignment-precision: level-to-level ≤ 3μm
- Alignment-precision: micropattern to machined features ≤ 10μm
- Mold thickness = 3 - 8mm
- Maximal mold dimensions = 300 x 300mm
- Maximal patterned area = 200 x 200mm
- Parallelism Frontside-to-backside ≤ 20μm (Backside: surface grinded)
- Robust handling
- Integration of mechanical mounting features
- Ready-to-use mold-inserts according to customer drawing
- Contour wire-electrodischarge machined (tolerance = ± 10µm)
- Available antisticking-coating (fluoro-based)
- Available wear-protection coating (TiN)
- Compatibility to most patterning methods: - e-beam resists (PMMA, HSQ)
- XIL-resists
- UV-lithography: AZ positive resists, Microchem SU-8
- Hot-embossed polymers, Thermal imprinting,...