An overview of the major sensor and actuator projects using the micromachining capabilities of the Microelectronics Development Laboratory at Sandia National Laboratories will be presented. Development efforts are underway for a variety of micromechanical devices and control electronics for those devices. Surface micromachining is the predominant technology under development. Pressure sensors b...

DEVICE DESIGN We present the design, fabrication, and demonstration of a fully decoupled 2D gimbal scanner with angular vertical comb (AVC) actuators. The device is realized by combining a foundry surface-micromachining process (MUMPs) with a 3-mask deep-reactive-ionetching (DRIE) post process. Surface-micromachining provides versatile mechanical design and electrical interconnect while bulk mi...

We describe a technique for surface and subsurface micromachining of glass substrates by using tightly focused femtosecond laser pulses at a wavelength of 1660 nm. A salient feature of pulsed laser micromachining is its ability to drill subsurface tunnels into glass substrates. To demonstrate a potential application of this micromachining technique, we fabricate simple microfluidic structures o...

An overview of the current state of the art in scanning micromirror technology for switching, imaging, and beam steering applications is presented. The requirements that drive the design and fabrication technology are covered. Electrostatic, electromagnetic, and magnetic actuation techniques are discussed as well as the motivation toward combdrive configurations from parallel plate configuratio...

The emphasis on high aspect ratio micromachining techniques for microsystems/MEMS has been mainly to achieve novel devices with, for example, high sensing or actuation performance. Often these utilize deep structures (100–1,000 lm) with vertical wall layers but with relatively modest spatial resolution (1–10 lm). As these techniques move from research to industrial manufacture, the capital cost...

This work presents a micromachined RF-CMOS transformer fabricated in a commercially available 0.18μm CMOS process. Maskless micromachining post-processing is used to remove oxide and substrate material from around the transformer, reducing parasitic effects and improving the performance of the transformer. Index Terms — baluns, CMOS integrated circuits; MEMS, maskless micromachining, Q enhancem...

Femtosecond lasers currently show much promise as potential sources of choice in a number of laser micromachining applications, including biomedicine, photonics and semiconductors. The status of micromachining with femtosecond pulses is reviewed for a variety of materials and a comparison made with other solid-state lasers. An outlook for developments in this area is presented.