Using insolubility wave-front for polymer deposition on self-assembling microfabricated parts

Many low temperature techniques exist for the deposition of polymer material. However, existing techniques require macroscopic substrates and are therefore inadequate for small, released microfabricated parts. We present a method for depositing material on microparts or substrates which utilizes a macroscopic solubility change to induce microscopic precipitation and selective deposition. Selectivity was achieved by modification of surface energy using self-assembled monolayers. We term this method insoluble liquid energy minimization, or ILEM. Macroscale substrates were used to characterize ILEM, and the method was applied to 20-100 μm-sized microfabricated parts which self-assembled into three-dimensional microstructures.