How Can I Even Out My PMMA Structures Through Heating or Annealing?

[Zamot40]

I made some structures in PMMA and now I would like to even them out a little bit. The structures are made with thermal imprint and are 150 nm deep and with a period of 300 nm, which is the smallest stamp we have at the university, I could of course make a new stamp, but that would take a lot of time.

Right now I am considering annealing of the samples to make them soft and give it a long time in the oven and the PMMA will float a bit. eg. 150 degree Celcius for 2 hours.

I have also considered heating the oven to 1200 degree celsius and give it a short time, eg. 5 minutes.

If anyone has some experience or knowledge of this I would be happy

 

[Danger]

I'd love to help you, but I have absolutely no idea of what the hell you're talking about. :s

 

[Zamot40]

okay maybe I don't not make myself clear enough. I made a drawing of what has been done to the PMMA and what I want to do with it. Maybe it looks a

bit odd due to the imgur upload. We have some PMMA with structure in it and then I want these structures to shrink and I thought heating them in the oven would soften the structures out. I did some testing in the lab with PMMA in the oven at 500 degree celsius for 5 seconds to 1 minute. The ones at 1 minute are totally destroyed, but 15 seconds seemed to not make any damage to the PMMA, however the somewhat larger scratches were not softened either.
I also tried 1½ hour in the oven at 160 degree, but this just reshaped the PMMA totally.
Now I am thinking the long duration low temperature is the best way to go, but It would take a long time to find the optimal parameters so I would really like some help here.

 

[Danger]

I'm sorry, but I didn't make my previous post clear enough. I didn't mean that you posted a bad question; it's just that I know nothing about the subject. Someone else will have to help you. I just responded so you wouldn't feel ignored.

 

[rbelli1]

Are the sharp points necessary? You could polish or etch the surface and the grooves would be shallower.

BoB

 

[Zamot40]

No the sharp points are not necessary. You make a good point, but polishing only ~75 nm is practicly impossible with the tools we have at the university. Some form of well controlled chemical etch might do the job. Reactive ions etching could work if I could coat the grooves with a thin layer of some protecting material I suppose.