Hi Maggie, Those silane you used should give you good result. The ideal process should be: vacuum the chamber where you put ur mold in; then introduce saline vapor into that chamber; then close all the inlet and outlet to treat the mold for 30min; then vacuum the chamber again, may use N2 to flush out the residual silane. after this process, you should get a good non-sticking mold. However, there's an easy way. I used to use HMDS (safer than those u used) in a dissicator and it worked fine for me. Just pour some HMDS in a glass vial, put the vial and ur mold into a dissicator, pump it down (not too much, i only used our facility vacuum line, a mechanical pump should be good enough), close the outlet to create a HMDS vapor environment for ur mold. let it there for 2 hrs. Open the dissicator and u should be good to go. you can try to put a small water droplet onto ur mold and see how the treatment has changed its contact angle. Good Luck. and be careful with those silane. Guocheng Shao --- On Wed, 6/30/10, Maggie Q. Laiwrote: From: Maggie Q. Lai Subject: [mems-talk] releasing layer for PDMS mold To: "General MEMS discussion" Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 1:13 PM Hi, I am trying to coat my glass master mold with with some releasing agent for PDMS mold. I found from a lof of papers that it is a common practice to treat the substrate using fluorinated tricholosilane vapor in a vacuum desiccator to form a monolayer on the substrate. But I tried with (HEPTADECAFLUORO-1,1,2,2-TETRAHYDRODECYL)TRICHLOROSILANE (C10H4Cl3F17Si ) from Gelest, but even before I started pumping the desiccator the liquid silane on the pippet tip and on the wall of the vial already became some kind of white foam. Consequently the anti-adhesion layer didn't work well. I am aware that the silane may react with the water in the air, but how can I avoid that? Seems people always use it just in a fume hood, not a glovebox. Is there something I am missing? Can you please give me some solution? Suggestion on alternative way for releasing layer is also welcome. Thanks. Maggie