Wide-Size Range and High Robustness Self-Assembly Micropillars for Capturing Microspheres.

ABSTRACT

Capillary force driven self-assembly micropillars (CFSA-MP) holds immense promise for the manipulation and capture of cells/tiny objects, which has great demands of wide size range and high robustness. Here, we propose a novel method to fabricate size-adjustable and highly robust CFSA-MP that can achieve wide size range and high stability to capture microspheres. First, we fabricate a microholes template with an adjustable aspect ratio using the spatial-temporal shaping femtosecond laser double-pulse Bessel beam-assisted chemical etching technique, and then the micropillars with adjustable aspect ratio are demolded by polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). We fully demonstrated the advantages of the Bessel optical field by using the spatial-temporal shaping femtosecond laser double-pulse Bessel beams to broaden the height range of the micropillars, which in turn expands the size range of the captured microspheres, and finally achieving a wide range of capturing microspheres with a diameter of 5-410 µm. Based on the inverted mold technology, the PDMS micropillars have ultrahigh mechanical robustness, which greatly improves the durability. CFSA-MP has the ability to capture tiny objects with wide range and high stability, which indicates great potential applications in the fields of chemistry, biomedicine, and microfluidics.