Fig. 3

Illustration and control mechanism of shearing microlithography. a An analogue of the model of flow past a circular cylinder, the width of the line width W is affected by the moving speed U and the radius of the probe R as \(W = 2\left( {1 + \sqrt {\frac{U}{{U_{\mathrm{c}}}}} } \right)R\) (detailed deduction see Methods). b, c Experimental data are well fitted the function (W = 2 × (18.5 × U^0.5 + 1)×10⁻⁵ m (b) when R is fixed at 10⁻⁵ m, and W = 3.84 × R when U is 2 mm s⁻¹ (c), showing a precise control of SML. Inset in c shows the POM images of lines drawn with different velocities, scale bars, 100 μm. d–h LMCs with descending layer spacing were fabricated to evaluate the resolution limit of SML. Specifically, a probe with diameter of 5 μm was utilized to construct LMCs with lamellar structures with layer spacing of 100 μm (d), 50 μm (e), 30 μm (f), 20 μm (g), 10 μm (h). The lamellar feature is still distinguishable at layer spacing of 10 μm, demonstrating the resolution of SML is around 10 μm, Scale bars, 200 μm