Large-area nanoimprint and application to cell cultivation

Nanoimprint has been expanding to various industrial fields, such as optical device, semiconductor and bio-devices. High-throughput machine and process are necessary for industrialization of thermal nanoimprint products. Conventional parallel press method needs long tact time because of the long heating and cooling process in thermal nanoimprint. We proposed the sheet nanoimprint method which uses the newly developed belt nanomold. The continuous process became possible by using the belt nanomold and we demonstrated the 200- and 25-nm dots formation onto over 10-m-long films with 10-mm/s film speed. For bio-application, we demonstrated the spheroid formation of HeLa and hepatic cells on nanoimprinted pillar structures. The cells were easy to coalesce on the pillar structure and the spheroids were formed. Uniform-size spheroids were formed at predefined positions by using micro-incubator structure.