Feature development on prepatterned elastomer surfaces upon ion implantation

Oxygen plasma ion implantation on the common elastomer polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) can induce wrinkled and disordered surface morphologies. Here we present a convenient approach of generating (sub)micron-sized features, in order to control the development of such ripple-like features during plasma treatment process. The correlations between the spontaneous patterns with different surface treatment conditions, such as plasma bias voltage and processing time, as well as the effect of surface prepatterns, were studied. The presence of prepatterns suppressed the formation of ripples on the implanted PDMS surfaces, which is advantageous for eliminating the rough surface topologies induced in plasma-treated samples.

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► We used a simple and effective prepatterning step to control the wave growth during plasma treatment.
► We examined the height variation of original features of pre-pattern.
► The wave regularity on the surface feature was better than that on the control flat surface.
► Spontaneous ripple growth on the surface feature was suppressed under low bias voltage and ordered under higher one.
► A convenient way to avoid damage from the randomly-orientation ripples due to stress release process was demonstrated.