Microcontact Printing: Limitations and Achievements

Microcontact printing (µCP) offers a simple and low‐cost surface patterning methodology with high versatility and sub‐micrometer accuracy. The process has undergone a spectacular evolution since its invention, improving its capability to form sub‐100 nm SAM patterns of various polar and apolar materials and biomolecules over macroscopic areas. Diverse development lines of µCP are discussed in this work detailing various printing strategies. New printing schemes with improved stamp materials render µCP a reproducible surface‐patterning technique with an increased pattern resolution. New stamp materials and PDMS surface‐treatment methods allow the use of polar molecules as inks. Flat elastomeric surfaces and low‐diffusive inks push the feature sizes to the nanometer range. Chemical and supramolecular interactions between the ink and the substrate increase the applicability of the µCP process. The main concept of the µCP process is the formation of patterned self‐assembled monolayers when an inked elastomeric stamp is in conformal contact with a substrate. The number of µCP‐related publications (determined using Scifinder Scholar 2007) has significantly increased in the past 15 years, showing the increasing interest in this easy and versatile surface patterning technique.