Versatile methods for the fabrication of polyvinylidene fluoride microstructures

Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) microstructures are of interest for a number of BioMEMS applications both for their piezoelectric and biocompatible properties. In this work, simple soft lithography-based techniques were developed to fabricate PVDF microstructures with diverse geometries, including microarrays of pillars, lines, and wells. Four different microstructure configurations were created: freestanding, stamped discontinuous, stamped continuous and imprinted patterns. Features with lateral dimensions down to 1 μm were consistently reproduced on 2.5 cm diameter areas. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements of poled PVDF microstructures confirmed a marked inverse piezoelectric behavior. The techniques presented here have a number of advantages over previously demonstrated PVDF micropatterning approaches.