Optical discrepancy in the mosaic texture of NOA65 photopolymer transfer printed using phase-separated PS/PMMA surface structures treated with cyclohexane

In this paper, we studied the physical and optical properties of the mosaic-textured surface of NOA65 photopolymer transfer printed indirectly using thin layers of phase-separated PS/PMMA blend. The immiscible, phase-separated PS/PMMA blend was spin-coated onto a glass surface and treated with cyclohexane to form the mosaic texture, then the texture was used to transfer print onto UV-curable NOA65 photopolymer with PDMS used as an indirect transfer bridge. The PS/PMMA membrane had three phase-separated sub-thin layer structures: the top PS-rich layer, the interlayer PS/PMMA blend, and the underlying PMMA-rich layer. Using a selective solvent (cyclohexane), the PS phase of the membrane surface was dissolved to form the mosaic structure. By transfer printing the mosaic structures of different textures indirectly onto NOA65, three varieties of surface structure were formed: Non-continuous mosaic textures, smooth surfaces with many interior indentations, and more obvious mosaic structures. The NOA65 photopolymer not only has favorable elasticity, rendering it rollable and malleable, but our experimental observations also revealed that as there are samples with 60% PS and samples with 40% PMMA, transfer printing onto the more evenly distributed mosaic texture on the NOA65 surface enabled it to have self-cleaning effects, such as hydrophobicity and not easily attracting dust (the so-called lotus effect) as well as possessing high optical transmittance, and low reflectance with minimal HAZE value (HAZE value often is expressed as clarity). These features can be applied to many common optical components such as screens or glass display cabinets.