Tunable diffraction grating in flexible substrate by UV-nanoimprint lithography

The fabrication of flexible advanced devices is a very important issue that requires the hybrid integration of different nanostructured materials. In this work, we report on a new molding technique based on an improved hard UV-nanoimprint lithography process (hard UV-NIL) using a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) film. The large-scale integration of a high-quality nanostructured gold pattern in PDMS is made possible with the use of an inorganic sacrificial layer soluble in hydrogen peroxide. A tunable diffraction gold stripe grating has been fabricated by transferring a 1 cm² stripe grating from a rigid silicon substrate to a flexible PDMS substrate. As a result, we successfully demonstrate diffraction grating optical tunability when mechanical tension is applied. (paper)