Design and prototype of an automated system for commercially viable production using micro contact printing

This dissertation is a documentation of the thought process, its justification and the implementation details that went into prototyping a fully automated system employing Micro Contact Printing, an emerging technique for replication and pattern transfer using soft organic materials, for a nano technology based company in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the summer of 2006. The thesis takes the reader through an extensive literature review of the suite of soft lithography techniques - Near Field Soft Optical Lithography, Replica Molding and Micro contact printing - focused on the critical factors for taking these techniques from research facilities to commercial manufacturing facilities. Micro Contact Printing was studied more extensively than the others. We propose a system level design for viable manufacturing using micro contact printing and also present the implementation details of an automated prototype for the same.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Chauhan, Karan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David E. Hardt.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/38293

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/38293