An annealing process for mechanical strength improvement of Parylene micropore-arrayed membrane

This paper used an effective annealing process to improve the performance of Parylene C micropore-arrayed membranes fabricated with Parylene C moulding strategy. The results indicated that the annealing treatment at 320°C for 2h in nitrogen sealed the keyholes, which were unavoidably generated in the conventional Parylene C moulding process, because of melting and reflow at high temperature. A chromatic confocal imaging (CCI) based platform was established to test the mechanical properties of the prepared Parylene C micropore-arrayed membranes after annealing treatment, with the one without annealing as comparison. The mechanical testing results demonstrated that the annealing treated Parylene C micropore-arrayed membranes presented 13.4% higher mechanical strength compared to the unannealed one.