Exercise in Experimental Plastics Technology: Hot Embossing of Polymers with surface microstructure

Hot Embossing of polymers with surface microstructure Polymer materials have proven to be good materials for manufacturing nano/ and microstructure. There are three major processing techniques: hot embossing, injection moulding and casting. Hot embossing provides several advantages such as relatively low cost for embossing tools, simple operation and high replication accuracy for small features. Two different plastic materials will be used to replicate surface microstructures by hot embossing. The hot embossing will be done in a hydraulic press where it is easy to control temperature and pressure. The microstructures will be analysed in a confocal microscope at the Riso National Laboratory. The results will be compared with a simple mathematical model.