Required equipment
|
• Porous membranes as templates
|
• Photolithography
|
• Electrodeposition setup
|
• Thin film deposition setup
|
Suitable materials
|
• Conducting materials as outer layer
|
• Materials compatible with vacuum deposition
|
Advantages
|
• Easily accessible method
|
• Wide range of materials
|
• Compact fabrication setup
|
• Fabrication of tubular structures with wide range of length and diameter possible
|
• Fine control of layer thickness down to nanometer precision
|
• Dynamic structures (stimuli-responsive microtubes)
|
• Fixed tube array possible for mechanistic studies (i.e., bubble nucleation)
|
Limitations
|
• Tube shape preset by template pores
|
• Often requires vacuum deposition machine
|
• Requires conductive outer layer
|
• Release of tubes after dissolution of membrane
|