Toward the fabrication of hybrid polymer/metal three-dimensional microstructures

Abstract

A method for coating three-dimensional microstructures fabricated by multiphoton absorption polymerization (MAP) with metallic patterns in a selective manner is introduced in this paper. We first use a small fraction of the output of a mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser to induce MAP in a homemade acrylic-based resin featuring a commercially-available photoinitiator. Then, through a novel multiphoton-induced process, we deposit metallic silver onto the surfaces of microstructures fabricated by MAP. In this paper we present preliminary results on the fabrication of hybrid polymer/metal microstructures.