Micro bearing systems for Micro Electromechanical Systems (MEMS) have drawn attention for several decades as critical components for micro rotating machinery. Ideally, frictionless bearings are needed, and in practice, micro gas bearings approach the ideal. Typically, bearings function as a separate component, assembled onto sliding counterparts. However, in micro scale devices, assembly proced...

This paper discusses the fabrication of microfluidic channels using micro end milling and micro electrical discharge (ED) milling on metals and polymers. The width of the microchannels fabricated by micro end milling was 100-800 μm with 1-2 aspect ratio. The average surface roughness values were 100-200 nm and 80-120 nm on metals and polymers respectively. The end milling was found to form more...

Miniaturisation of Electrical Machines Bernd Ponick (Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany) Approaches for a miniaturisation of electrical machines that are based on an electromagnetic principle have to overcome numerous challenges. Some of these are only a result of the rules of growth (or shrinkage), some are a result of the micro technological fabrication processes. This paper gives an overv...

Recent advances in the fabrication of microflow devices using micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology are described. Passive and active liquid flow control and particle-handling methods in micrometer-scale channels are reviewed. These methods are useful in micro total analysis systems (μTAS) and laboratory-on-a-chip systems. Multiple flow control systems (i.e., arrayed microvalves) fo...

The design of mechanisms for building micro-tools can be viewed as a shape optimization problem with a peculiar objective function. We propose such an optimization method based on homogenization, which is called topology optimization. RÉSUMÉ. La conception optimale de mécanismes, destinés par exemple à la fabrication de micro-mécanismes peut-être envisagée comme un problème d’optimisation de fo...

The interest in micro- and nano-devices based on biodegradable polymers for in vivo applications is growing rapidly and the key to these applications lies in the fashioning of features analogous to the size of cells. This paper presents fabrication techniques for leveraging micro- and nanostructures on biodegradable polymers. Innovative approaches such as replication molding, laser interference...

We report laser micro-fabrication of photonic crystal structures in silica glass and photopolymerizing resins, and present a detailed analysis of their structural and optical properties. Photonic crystals with 2D triangular lattice and 3D diamond lattice in glass are found to exhibit moderately pronounced photonic pseudogaps. Formation of planar microcavity is demonstrated in log-pile 3D photon...

With the rapid development of Micro-electro-mechanical Systems (MEMS) fabrication technologies, many microelectrodes with various structures and functions have been designed and fabricated for applications in biomedical research, diagnosis and treatment through electrical stimulation and electrophysiological signal recording. The flexible MEMS microelectrodes exhibit excellent characteristics i...

The reason behind the majority of difficulties encountered in the integration of nanoscale objects with microelectromechanical systems can almost always be traced back to the lack of batch-compatible fabrication techniques at the nanoscale. On the one hand, self-assembly products do not allow a high level of control on their orientation and numbers, and hence, their attachment to a micro device...

We motivate the need for a rapid and portable genetic identification kit whose design must be fundamentally different from the DNA micro-arrays used in laboratories because of speed, detection sensitivity and facility concerns. A micro/nano bead platform developed in our laboratory with modified PCR and hybridization steps and with tailor-designed microfluidic fabrication techniques is then int...