Fabrication method for structured porous polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)

In this paper, a novel fabrication method for porous PDMS is proposed. It is based on a creative combination of the structured molding, the micro-region fusion and the vacuum-assisted infiltration during the use of salt particle as porogen. Despite the simple and fast process, the as-fabricated porous PDMS samples all demonstrate significant improvement in pore interconnectivity and salt residue irrespective of the pore size distribution. At the same time, the porous PDMS samples with various 3D structure contours have also been successfully obtained, showing powerful structurization capability that seldom addressed by existing methods. In addition, the application advantage given by the structurization of porous PDMS has been experimentally validated through its use in the construction of the capacitive pressure sensor.