Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing: UMass faculty members Kenneth Carter and Vincent Rotello have developed a nanoimprint molding technique to enable the rapid prototyping of electronic devices. The parent device structure is fabricated using a conventional, expensive and time consuming multi-step top-down process sequence. The desired structure is then non-destructively replicated in an imprint mold. Next the mold is used as a master to reproduce multiple generations of the original structure through a simple, two-step imprinting and etching process. This achievement enables low-cost, rapid prototyping of numerous device structures from one original patterned device.
