Abstract
We investigated the electroless and electrolytic plating of photopolymerized resin for use in the molding of three-dimensional nickel micro-structures. The micro-molding process consists of four steps: fabrication of the resin mold, electroless plating of the mold, electrolytic grinding to open the interior structure, and extraction. An epoxy resin mold, which is suitable for two-photon micro-polymerization, was successfully plated with nickel through this electroless process. Electrolytic plating was found to be useful for applying a thick nickel film on non-conductive resin with low crystal lattice distortion and few impurities. Regarding the design of the mold opening, it was shown that electroless plating does not proceed inside non-through-holes on the sub-millimeter scale, but that it proceeds inside through-holes with a diameter of 550 μm and down to the depth of 2 mm.
