Fabrication of a three-dimensional (3D) metallic mold for multi-production of a microstructure was
studied to settle the problem of long processing time in 3D microfabrication. To date, complicated
3D microstructures including 3D photonic crystals, 3D microlens array, 3D filter for microfludics,
and something else were created successfully using the two-photon polymerization (TPP) which
was considered as paving the way to fabricate a real 3D shape in nano/microscale. However, for
those fabrications, much processing time and efforts were inevitably required. To solve this issue,
a simple and effective way was proposed in this paper; 3D master patterns were prepared using
TPP, and then counter-shaped Ni molds were fabricated by electroforming process. By using
these molds, 3D microstructures can be reproduced with short-processing time and low-effort
comparing to the conventional approach, TPP. We report some parameters to fabricate a metallic
mold precisely.