Controlled fabrication of hierarchically microstructured surfaces via surface wrinkling combined with template replication

In this paper, we present a simple method by combining surface wrinkling and template replication to create a series of hierarchical structures on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer. The primary stable lined patterns are formed by duplicating commercialized compact disk and digital versatile disk with PDMS. The secondary microscale patterns are from surface wrinkling, which is elicited by oxygen plasma (OP) treatment of the prestrained PDMS stamp followed with the prestrain release. By systematically varying the OP exposure duration, the prestrain, and the angle (θ) between the primary pattern orientation and the prestrain direction, we obtain highly ordered well-organized composite patterns from different patterning techniques and with different length scales and mechanical stabilities.