In the current communications market, there exists a great demand for devices, which function as passive signal processing units. High performance and small size are identified to be the bottlenecks to meet market demand in communications area[1,3]. MEMS or micromachining technology can yield small, low weight and high performance components to replace the currently used off-chip components. Th...

In the world of MEMS processing today, fabrications of membrane are performed using bulk micromachining (BMM). However these techniques not easiest to integrate with CMOS standard process due to not compatible of the processing flow. An attractive alternative deployment of surface micromachining (SMM). There is a trend to use surface micromachining to their advantage of simplicity in design and...

Laser machining/micromachining normally induces in the target material a residual stress distribution, which may favor microcrack propagation leading to reduced fatigue life of the material. This paper investigates the feasibility of introducing the effect of laser shock processing (LSP), that is, imparting a compressive residual stress distribution into the target material, into laser micromac...

Recent advances in the micromachining of poly(p-xylylenes), commercially known as Parylenes, have enabled the development of novel structures and devices for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). In particular, Parylene C (poly[chloro-p-xylylene]) has been explored extensively for biomedical applications of MEMS given its compatibility with micromachining processes, proven biocompatibility, an...

In the last decade, examples of devices manufactured with SUMMiT technology have demonstrated the capabilities of polysilicon surface micromachining [1]. Currently we are working on enhancements to this technology that utilize additional structural layers of silicon nitride to enable Microfluidics and BioMEMS applications. The addition of the silicon nitride layers allows the fabrication of mic...

A major technical hurdle in microfluidics is the difficulty in achieving high fidelity lithographic patterning on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Here, we report a simple yet highly precise and repeatable PDMS surface micromachining method using direct photolithography followed by reactive ion etching (RIE). Our method to achieve surface patterning of PDMS applied an O(2) plasma treatment to PDMS ...

A major technical hurdle in microfluidics is the difficulty in achieving high fidelity lithographic patterning on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Here, we report a simple yet highly precise and repeatable PDMS surface micromachining method using direct photolithography followed by reactive ion etching (RIE). Our method to achieve surface patterning of PDMS applied an O2 plasma treatment to PDMS to...

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the literature, mostly of the last 10–15 years, that is enhancing our understanding of the mechanics of the rapidly growing field of micromachining. The paper focuses on the mechanics of the process, discussing both experimental and modeling studies, and includes some work that, while not directly focused on micromachining, provides important insigh...

We present the use of an accessible micromachining technique (acoustic micromachining) for manufacturing micron-feature surfaces with non-discretely varying depth. Acoustic micromachining allows for non-photolithographic production of metal templates with programmable spatial patterns and involves the use of standard acoustic, cutting and electroplating equipment for mass production of vinyl re...

A study of AlxGa1−xAs as a sacrificial film for surface micromachining is presented. AlxGa1−xAs etch rate and selectivity are measured over a range of aluminum mole fractions and HF etchant concentrations during the release of structural features up to 500 μm in width. The etch process is found to be diffusion limited, with an inverse power law relationship between etch depth and etch rate. Exc...