Abstract
A soft lithography process has been developed to transfer a pattern directly from a flat PDMS stamp to a stainless steel cylindrical substrate using an SAM ink, without any need to physically attach the stamp to a roller. The process uses standard semiconductor wafer processing equipment, along with specially designed elements to adapt to the cylindrical substrates. The entire process can be applied to batch processing and thus can be directly applied to manufacturing. This technique was demonstrated by fabricating a steel herringbone journal bearing with a diameter of 1.5 mm. The HGJB is an important element which is used for high-speed rotating spindles of electromechanical systems such as hard disk drives, CD-Rom drives, and DVD drives in the consumer electronics industry. In this case, the pattern had a dimension of 85 microns and depth of 3 microns. Features as deep as ten microns and as narrow as two microns have been also demonstrated. © Springer-Verlag 2010.