Date of Submission

Spring 2014

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Chemistry

Project Advisor 1

Christopher LaFratta

Project Advisor 2

Csilla Szabo

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Direct laser writing (DLW) lithography is a useful way to generate microscopic patterns for lab-on-a-chip devices. We have developed a simple and inexpensive platform for the creation of these initial patterns using a homemade acrylic resin, a 405-nm laser diode, and a fluorescence microscope. To create sub-micrometer linewidths, we included a radical scavenger in the photoresist to quench excessive amounts of radicals generated from laser exposure. In this project, we compared various formulations of the photoresist and we presented a model for the radical polymerization in our photoresist. The model utilized the method of finite differences to numerically solve a system of parabolic partial differential equations describing the diffusive behaviors of particles in the photoresist. The model also made use of Markov chains to simulate the step-wise polymerization of the photoresist. The parameters in the model were determined by fitting the model on experimentally-obtained data.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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