Three-dimensional metallic microstructures fabricated by soft lithography and microelectrodeposition

Soft lithography offers a convenient set of methods for the transfer of patterns to planar and nonplanar substrates. Microelectrodeposition can transform thin metal patterns into self-supporting microstructures, weld components together, and strengthen microstructures after deformations. Together, soft lithography and electrochemistry provide synergistic technologies and the basis for a strategy for converting planar patterns into three-dimensional (3D) microstructures with complex topologies. This strategy is illustrated in the formation of folded tetrahedra, square-based pyramids, cylinders with joints, "pop-up" cubes, and linked chains and knots.