Development of a continuous injection direct rolling imprint system for microstructure thin-plate

A prototype of a continuous injection direct rolling (CIDR) imprint system was developed and applied to CIDR tests to evaluate its feasibility for the large-area replication of an optical micro device. The developed system adopts the theories of injection compression and thermal imprinting and presents the capacity to fabricate a 200 mm-wide and over 10 m-long PMMA plate and to replicate ultra-precision structures on its surface at a rolling speed range of 1.1–11.5 mm/s. Under the given CIDR conditions (injection temperature, 280 °C; injection pressure, 6 MPa; rolling force, 13 MPa; roller temperature, 85 °C), complete fabricating of a 0.7 mm-thick Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) plate with 17.3 μm-deep and 35 μm-wide V-groove microstructures was achieved at a rolling speed of 3.4 mm/s. Finally, a light guide plate for a backlight panel was fabricated by CIDR. The light transmittance of this plate reached 90.8 %, the maximum birefringence was ~99 nm and its average haze was 0.51 %.