Submicron Size Patterned Nickel Soft Lithographic Masters Using Aluminium Template

Nickel masters are widely used to produce surface relief grating like patterned antireflection coatings of polysiloxane material by simple embossing process. In the present work, patterned nickel master was prepared by using aluminium template, which is a foil peeled off from the commercial compact disk. Nickel was deposited using Watts nickel bath by pulsed electrodeposition for different relaxation times on patterned aluminium template. The deposition led to the transfer of patterns of aluminium replica to the nickel deposit. After deposition, the aluminium template was etched out chemically. Observation under an optical microscope showed that the obtained pattern was highly homogenous only for Ton = 0.1 ms, Toff = 0.9 ms duty cycles as compared with other ‘on’ and ‘off’ times of pulse cycles. This simple single step cost effective nickel master can serve as stamps for the subsequent embossing process. The preparation conditions and its salient features are discussed in this paper in detail.