Sub‐Micron Replication of Fused Silica Glass and Amorphous Metals for Tool‐Based Manufacturing

The growing importance of submicrometer-structured surfaces across a
variety of different fields has driven progress in light manipulation, color
diversity, water-repellency, and functional enhancements. To enable mass
production, processes like hot-embossing (HE), roll-to-roll replication (R2R),
and injection molding (IM) are essential due to their precision and material
flexibility. However, these processes are tool-based manufacturing (TBM)
techniques requiring metal molds, which are time-consuming and expensive
to manufacture, as they mostly rely on galvanoforming using templates made
via precision microlithography or two-photon-polymerization (2PP). In this
work, a novel approach is demonstrated to replicate amorphous metals from
fused silica glass, derived from additive manufacturing and structured using
hot embossing and casting, enabling the fabrication of metal insets with
features in the range of 300 nm and a surface roughness of below 10 nm. By
partially crystallizing the amorphous metal, during the replication process, the
insets gain a high hardness of up to 800 HV. The metal molds are successfully
used in polymer injection molding using different polymers including
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polystyrene (PS) and polyethylene (PE) as well as glass nanocomposites. This
work is of significant importance to the field as it provides a production
method for the increasing demand for sub-micron-structured tooling in the
area of polymer replication while substantially reducing their cost of
production.