Polymeric optical sheets are significant components in large-scale display devices and are difficult to fabricate due to small size and high accuracy of large-area microstructures. As a newly developed molding technique, injection-rolling is capable of continuously and efficiently achieving large-area microstructures on the polymer surface with short time and high replication. However, the microstructure-forming mechanism during the injection-rolling process has not been fully understood. In this paper, a three-dimensional steady-state heat-flow coupling simulation model of the injection-rolling zone was established to obtain the distributions of the polymer state transition interfaces. According to the state transition interfaces, the entire microstructure-forming process was numerically simulated by dividing into filling and embossing stages to systematically analyze the effects of the polymer state transition interface on filling rate. After this, the relationship between process parameters such as injection temperature, rolling speed, and roll temperature and polymer state transition interface was investigated to develop a position prediction model of the state transition interface. In addition, the optical sheet injection-rolling experiments were also carried out to reveal that the filling rate of the microstructures on the optical sheet can be affected by varying the positions of the state transition interfaces. Therefore, the microstructure-forming mechanism could be revealed as theoretical guidance for the subsequent injection-rolling production with high quality and high efficiency.
Keywords: injection-rolling; microstructure forming mechanism; optical sheet; polymer state transition.