Investigations on reel-to-reel hot embossing

Reel-to-reel processes like rotary hot embossing allow micro-patterning of flexible foil based polymer substrates. Such technologies have the potential to be the basis for extremely cheap micro-products. This is due to the low price for polymer foils as well as to the high throughput of reel-to-reel processes. An application field which could benefit of this technology is micro-fluidics. In this paper, a new type of reel-to-reel hot embossing machine will be presented. In contrast to commercially available reel-to-reel embossing machines, the machine described here is capable of doing continuous and discontinuous hot embossing. It is thus suited for fabrication of low, medium and high quantities of micro-patterned polymer components. It has been investigated how parameters like foil temperature, feed rate, embossing force, hardness of the counter roller and temperature of the embossing roller will influence the quality of the embossed structures. The results of this investigation will be presented and discussed.