Bulletin No. 1, 2014

44   Chinese University Bulletin No. 1, 2014 ‘Precision Roll-to-Roll Microcontact Printing’ Technology Optical gratings and transparent electrodes, which are produced with submicron technology, are essential components in a wide range of optoelectronics devices. The conventional approach for fabricating submicron resolution patterns is photolithography or electron-beam lithography, which can create extremely precise patterns (50 nanometers). However, these processes are expensive, complex and need to be performed in a cleanroom. To solve this problem, researchers have developed the Microcontact Printing (MCP) technique in the hope of replacing the conventional production processes. Prof. Chen Shih-chi, Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, and his team have recently developed and constructed a flexure-based precision roll-to-roll (R2R) printing system that demonstrates multi- axis submicron level precision and repeatability. This ‘Precision Roll-to- Roll Microcontact Printing’ technology enables fabrication of transparent gold microelectrodes to be performed in a non-cleanroom environment. The system rollers roll continuously just like printing paper, and large area transparent gold microelectrodes can be produced within a minute. Researcher Documents Sustained Mass Loss of Greenland Ice Sheet Prof. Liu Lin, assistant professor of the Earth System Science Programme, revealed in a joint research with international scientist s that the northeastern part of Greenland, the last remaining stable portion of Greenland’s ice sheet that has been stable for 25 years, is losing its ice rapidly. In particular, the Zachariae glacier has suffered a very significant retreat of 20 km just over the last decade. To quantitatively determine the sustained glacier thinning and mass loss, the interdisciplinary team of 13 scientists from 10 institutions (including the lead institution Technical University of Denmark, Stanford University and CUHK) in five countries synthesized a diversity of data acquired using geophysical and remote sensing techniques. The findings of this research have been published in the April 2014 issue of Nature Climate Change . Research