Design and fabrication of a SU-8 based electrostatic microactuator

Comb-drive microactuator is widely used in MEMS devices and traditionally is made of silicon as structural material using silicon-based fabrication technology. Recent development in UV lithography of SU-8 has made it possible to fabricate the ultra high aspect ratio microstructures with excellent sidewall quality. In this paper, we report a low cost alternative to the silicon-based comb drive by using cured SU-8 polymer as structural material. The microactuator was designed to have a integrated structure without assembly or bonding. A unique integration fabrication process was successfully developed based on UV lithography of SU-8 and selectively metallizing SU-8 polymer structures. Preliminary experimental results have proved the feasibility of the microactuator and the fabrication technology.     

Design and optimization of multi‐band Wilkinson power divider

In this paper, a general and easy procedure for designing the symmetrical Wilkinson power divider that achieves equal‐power split at N arbitrary frequencies is introduced. Each quarter‐wave branch in the conventional Wilkinson divider is replaced by N sections of transmission lines, and the isolation between the output ports is achieved by using N resistors. The design parameters are the characteristic impedances and lengths of the N transmission line sections, and the N isolation resistors. The even–odd modes of analysis are used to derive the design equations. Closed‐form expressions, which are suitable for CAD purposes, are derived for the dual‐band divider. For N ≥ 3, closed‐form expressions are not available, and therefore, the powerful particle swarm optimization method is used to obtain the design parameters. Examples of the dual‐, triple‐, and quad‐band dividers are presented to validate the proposed design procedure, and the results are compared, wherever possible, with published results using other methods. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2008.     

Modified Wilkinson power divider with harmonics suppression and compact size for GSM applications

In this article, a modified microstrip Wilkinson power divider with harmonics suppression for GSM communications applications is presented. For low‐pass filter designing, one open stub, one radial resonator, and two rectangular resonators are used. According to results related to insertion losses (|S₂₁| and |S₃₁|), stopband is wide and equal to 7.5 GHz (3.4‐10.9 GHz), under the condition of 20 dB harmonic suppression level. The results show that at the designed frequency of 1.8 GHz, the input return loss (|S₁₁|) and output return losses (|S₂₂| and |S₃₃|) are better than 22 dB, and the isolation between of output ports (|S₃₂|) is better than 30 dB. The size of the proposed power divider is compact and equal to 10.6 × 14.6 mm². Finally, the proposed power divider was fabricated and the measurement results illustrate a good agreement with simulation results.     

In situ fabrication of SU-8 movable parts by using PAG-diluted SU-8 as the sacrificial layer

In this paper we proposed a novel technology to make SU-8 movable parts in situ by using PAG-diluted SU-8 or SU-8R, a SU-8 solution with no photoacid generator (PAG) content, as the sacrificial layer. Since they are not or less sensitive to UV light the unexposed bottom layer in UV lithography will be dissolved to release the movable components during the final develop in PGMEA (Propylene Glycol Monomethyl Ether Acetate). The use of PAG-diluted SU-8 or SU-8R as a sacrificial layer offers several advantages including significant reduction in processing steps. It becomes the simplest technique currently available for in situ fabrication of SU-8 movable parts. In this paper the lithographic sensitivities of SU-8 as a function of the PAG concentration, detailed fabrication process and examples of fabricated SU-8 movable parts will be presented.     

基于SU-8的微流沟道的设计和制作

以SU—8作为结构材料,采用紫外光刻工艺,尤以斜曝光工艺为主,制造一种新型的、小型化的、低成本的、三维的、高深宽比的微流沟道,微流沟道的高度约为1100μm。初步确定出加工此微流沟道结构所需要的曝光计量、前烘时间、后烘时间和显影时间以及工艺方法,为加工其他尺寸的微流沟道提供参考。基于此方法加工的微流沟道可以应用在微型流式细胞仪上,来提供红细胞计数、血色素浓度、血小板计数和红细胞单元指数等参数。     

Study on the fabrication of a SU-8 cantilever vertically-allocated in a closed fluidic microchannel

Microsystem Technologies - This paper describes the fabrication of a vertically-allocated SU-8 cantilever in a closed fluidic channel. The difficulties to fabricate the vertically-allocated SU-8...     

Ionic polymer–metal composite bending actuator loaded with multi-walled carbon nanotubes

Multi-walled carbon nanotube (M-CNT)/Nafion nanocomposites were prepared by the dispersion of treated M-CNTs in a Nafion solution; this procedure was done in order to evaluate the influence of M-CNT loading of up to 7 wt.% on the M-CNT distribution behavior, mechanical properties, and the related actuation performance of the composites. As the M-CNT loading rose above 1 wt.%, the uniformly distributed M-CNT bundles induced by the Nafion polymer were determined to be perturbed, resulting in an inhomogeneous distribution. The heterogeneously distributed M-CNT bundles may provide an undesired impact on the connectivity within the Nafion membrane, thus giving rise to the poor electrochemically-generated actuation properties. It is important to note that the nanocomposite having only a 1 wt.% of M-CNT loading exhibited the best actuation performance in terms of the blocking forces produced by the M-CNT nanocomposites in a cantilever form. It can be understood that the performance improvement is caused by the uniform distribution of the M-CNT bundles, which was confirmed by TEM, XRD and electromechanical actuation tests. It is concluded that the M-CNT distribution behavior, induced by interactions between the polymer matrix, Nafion and the M-CNTs and the related electromechanical performance of the composites, are mainly governed by the M-CNT content. Also, DMA testing was performed.     

Multiple design approach of dual‐band Wilkinson power divider with arbitrary transmission line ratio

A dual‐band (DB) Wilkinson power divider with multiple design approach is proposed in this article, which consists of two‐section transmission lines (TLs) with arbitrary length ratio, one parallel LC circuit, and one resistor. Compared with the former works with equal physical lengths, the total physical size of the two‐section TLs can be decreased effectively. For a given DB frequency ratio, the maximum size reduction can be newly summarized as (n‐1)/(2n), where n indicates the length ratio of two‐section TLs. From the close‐formed design equations, multiple solutions of circuit parameters are newly summarized for DB operation, thus circuit design could be much more flexible and more efficient. Furthermore, in order to compact the proposed circuit size, compensation technology for two coupled‐line sections is also considered in circuit fabrication. Finally, design charts and an experimental circuit show good agreement with the theoretical simulation. Compared with the former work under the same design conditions: f₂/f₁ = 3.2, f₁ = 1 GHz and f₂ = 3.2 GHz, the proposed work provides compact circuit size and the size reduction is 25% with n = 2, m = 1.     

Design and fabrication of SU-8 micro optic fiber holder with cantilever-type elastic microclips

The optic alignment module containing out-of-plane 3D micro lenses, and micro optic fiber holders have been fabricated using tilted UV lithography technique in water with SU-8 photoresist (Ling and Lian in Proc SPIE 4979:402–409, 2007). Each holder is a circumscribed quadrilateral formed by a V-groove and pairs of fixed microclips, which will hold the fiber in position through the elastic deformation when the fiber is inserted. Since these microclips were fixed cantilever beams and its effective beam length, the distance between the fixed end of the beam and beam–fiber contact point, is very short (~62.5 μm), the stress on the beam is high even under a small (few microns) deformation. The inserted optical fiber was either too loose to lose its alignment accuracy, or too tight causing the clips to break because of dimensional tolerance. It becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to use them in practical applications. Therefore, the key issue of fabricating optical alignment module is to have a suitable stiffness of microclips with an appropriate deformation during the fiber insertion, which can provide enough force to hold the fiber for accurate alignment and avoid introducing neither significant viscous deformation nor the damage to the clips. In this paper, a novel technique to fabricate SU-8 cantilever beam as elastic clamping device in optical fiber holder is proposed. Simulation based on SU-8 material properties indicates that for a 250-μm-long, 50-μm-thick SU-8 beam the clamping force per unit beam width will range from 10 to 100 Newton/m as the deflection increased from 1.4 to 14 μm. This predicted performance is comparable to or even better than that of existing silicon nitride microclips in optical fiber holding application [Bostock et al. in J Micromech Microeng 8(4):343–360, 1998]. By using a two-mask process, we have fabricated free-end cantilever beams as fiber holding clips. In order to have longer beams over V-groove, the slots in the V-groove were introduced, which allow the beams extended deeper into the sloped V-groove walls. The micro alignment module with 250-μm-length cantilever beams as microclips for housing 125-μm-diameter optical fibers has been successfully fabricated using a 300-μm-thick SU-8 photoresist layer by a two-mask UV lithography processes. This approuch offers significant advantages over other techniques with respect to costs of material, simple in equipment, and easy in manufacture. These optical fiber holders with elastic microclips combined with pre-aligned out-of-plane 3D micro lenses make it possible that to build an integrated micro optic system with precise alignment accuracy on a wafer-scale.     

Different methods for the fabrication of UV-LIGA molds using SU-8 with tapered de-molding angles

De-molding is one of the most crucial steps for successful mass production of high aspect ratio microstructures in microreplication technologies of LIGA process. With a proper taper angle in mold structure, normal contact pressure on the structure will be abated; this will facilitate the de-molding procedure and at the same time prevent the microstructures of mold from being damaged. However, in the case of UV lithography, the top area of the patterned SU-8 resist is observed to be larger than the bottom area especially in cases of thick layer and high aspect ratio structures. In order to obtain an applicable metal mold for hot-embossing process, we purpose here several novel methods with backside exposure which can fabricate different taper angles with proper direction on the mold structures easily. In this paper, we described the technology concept, process details and related experimental results both in mold structures and molded PMMA replicas. In addition, various interesting 3D microstructures can be produced by combining these exposure methods. On-chip microneedle arrays were selected to demonstrate this ability.     

Swelling of SU-8 structure in Ni mold fabrication by UV-LIGA technique

UV-LIGA technique is used to fabricate hot embossing mold of PMMA microfluidic chip. Pre-polished Ni plate serves as electroforming substrate and the micro channel is the only structure to be electroformed in the fabricated mold. The precision of the micro channel strongly depends on the process parameters. Experiments show that the width of micro channel varies with the electroforming time. With the electroforming time of 108, 140 and 160 min, the width of micro channel reduces to 89, 86 and 82% of patterned SU-8 mold respectively, which is caused by swelling of SU-8 in acidic, high temperature electroforming solution. This swelling is the key answer to the slope of the sidewalls of the electroformed structure. This study is beneficial to optimizing microfluidic chip mold design.     

One-step maskless grayscale lithography for the fabrication of 3-dimensional structures in SU-8

We propose a novel and simplified method to fabricate complex 3-dimensional structures in SU-8 photoresist using maskless grayscale lithography. The proposed method uses a Digital Micro-mirror Device (DMD^®) to modulate the light intensity across a single SU-8 photoresist layer. Top and back-side exposure are implemented in the fabrication of original structures such as cantilevers, covered channels with embedded features and arrays of microneedles. The fabrication of similar structures in SU-8 with other techniques often requires complex physical masks or the patterning of several stacked layers. The effects of critical process parameters such as software mask design, exposure and developing conditions on the quality of 3-D structures are discussed. A number of applications using bridges, cantilevers and micromixers fabricated using this methodology are explored.     

Application of 3D gray mask for the fabrication of curved SU-8 structures

This paper proposes a novel technology to fabricate 3D structures such as curved structures on SU-8 resist by 3D gray mask combined with glycerol compensation technique. 3D Gray mask is designed and fabricated by patterning and reflowing AZ4620 resist on standard quartz or glass mask plate. Through exposure dose control, curved shapes with different curvatures have been successfully fabricated with smooth structure surface. Simple calculations on the prediction of the shapes and sizes of the exposed 3-D structures have also been carried out, and the results show a close relationship between the calculations and the experiments. Compared to traditional gray mask technologies, this method provides a simple and cost effective way to fabricate curved structures with reasonable surface smoothness, which may be suitable for optical or micro fluidic applications.Based on the following paper presented at the HARMST 2003 Conference: K. Y. Hung and F. G. Tseng, Application of Shadow Mask and Polarized Inclined-Exposure for Curved SU-8 Structures on Inclined Surface, Proc. of 5th High Aspect Ratio Micro-Structure Technology Conference, June 15–17, 2003, Monterey, California USA.This work was supported by the National Science Council of Taiwan, ROC under the grant NSC 89–2323-B-007–005.     

General design of impedance‐varying multi‐way Wilkinson power divider with bandwidth redefinition characteristics

In this article, a general design methodology of a multi‐way compact equal split Wilkinson power divider (WPD) with bandwidth redefinition characteristics and planar structure is proposed. Quarter‐wave matching uniform transmission lines in the conventional design are replaced with non‐uniform transmission lines (NTLs) governed by a truncated Fourier series. Even mode analysis is adopted to obtain NTLs with predefined bandwidth functionalities; whereas several isolation resistors are optimized in the odd mode analysis to achieve proper isolation and output ports matching over the frequency range of interest. Compactness is achieved by incorporating only one quarter‐wave wideband NTL transformer, with a length computed at the center frequency, in each arm. Two 3‐way WPDs with different frequency bands (i. e., 5‐9 GHz and 4‐10 GHz) and one 5‐9 GHz 4‐way divider examples are designed and simulated. Furthermore, a wideband 3‐way WPD operating over 4‐10 GHz band is fabricated and measured. Results show input and output ports matching and isolation below ?15 dB, and transmission parameters in the range of [–4.9,–6.2] dB and [–6,–7.5] dB across the operating band of the 3‐way and 4‐way WPDs, respectively.     

Adhesive bonding with SU-8 in a vacuum for capacitive pressure sensors

This paper describes a method for fabricating capacitive pressure sensors through the use of adhesive bonding with SU-8 in a vacuum. The influence of different parameters on the bonding of structured wafers was investigated. It was found that pre-bake time, pumping time, and the thickness of the crosslink layer are the most important factors for successful bonding. Bonding quality was evaluated by inspection through the transparent glass of the sensor and through the use of an SEM photograph, with 90% of the area successfully bonded and an ultimate yield of 70% of the sensors. The measured bonding strength was 17.15 MPa and 19.6 MPa for wafers bonded in 80 °C and 100 °C, respectively. The pressure–capacitance characteristic test results show that this bonding process is a viable micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) fabrication technology for cavity sealing in a vacuum.     

Evaluation of optical qualities of a LIGA-spectrometer in SU-8

In the past few years, SU-8 negative resist has been used in addition to PMMA positive resist for MEMS applications using deep X-ray lithography [1]. The advantage of SU-8 compared to PMMA is a higher sensitivity and a higher chemical stability. However, it is not yet as well analyzed in terms of microstructure quality. In this work SU-8 was examined with regards to its suitability to be used for high-resolution MOEMS. This is done exemplarily for a LIGA microspectrometer as this device can be thoroughly analyzed evaluating the side wall quality and the optical gratings as single structures, as well as the whole optical system [2]. In order to eliminate the high damping of visible light inside solid SU-8 material, a hollow wave guide design has been chosen. SU-8 was detected to reproduce structures in the nanometer-regime, combined with an averaged peak-to-valley profile better than PMMA. Although the measured roughness of SU-8 is worse than that of PMMA, there is still a comparable damping of the signal in MOEMS for both resists.     

Bending control of Nafion-based electroactive polymer actuator coated with multi-walled carbon nanotubes

Electrical bending control of Nafion-based ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) is quite difficult. Unlike a conventional fully hydrated noble metal-coated Nafion type IPMC, however, highly dehydrated silver-coated Nafion type IPMC exhibited better electrical bending controllability. Embedding of the multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) into Nafion surface promoted adsorption of a larger quantity of silver on the Nafion surface, since the MWCNT surface served as adsorption sites for silver. A MWCNT-embedded Nafion coated with such a large quantity of silver (SCNT-Naf) exhibited large bending curvature under an applied voltage when in a highly dehydrated state, because of large scale induction of silver redox reaction. We could even achieve autonomous bending curvature control of the highly dehydrated SCNT-Naf quantitatively by automatically monitoring total charge imposed on it.     

氨气检测的聚苯胺碳纳米管复合敏感膜的研究与应用

本文介绍了基于聚苯胺及多壁碳纳米管复合材料的氨气传感器的制备与测试,使用原位聚合法使苯胺单体以碳纳米管为核心进行聚合反应,运用介电泳法制备得聚苯胺/多壁碳纳米管气敏复合膜传感器。该传感器对10×10-6氨气的响应灵敏度为3.4,响应时间15 s,而对比实验中聚苯胺膜传感器的灵敏度为1.9。实验结果表明,由于碳纳米管在介电泳过程中构建的大比表面积纳米三维结构和优良的导电率,纳米复合材料的微观结构和导电性能都得到大幅改善,从而使得复合物具有相对于纯聚苯胺膜更好的气敏特性。     

New fabrication techniques of SU-8 fiber holder with cantilever-type elastic microclips by inclined UV lithography in water using single Mylar mask

In contact UV lithography, a pair of cantilever beams fabricated by two inclined exposures at ±45° in SU-8 using a single mask will form a connected end on the top of SU-8 layer. These beams made of SU-8 with fixed-end have been used as optical fiber holders (Ling and Lian in Microsyst Technol 13(3–4):245–251, 2007). Recently, a two-mask, two-step process to fabricate free-end cantilever beams from SU-8 using inclined UV lithography has been developed (Ling et al. in Microsyst Technol 15(3):429–435, 2009), which has been successfully applied to fabricate SU-8 optical fiber holders with long free-end cantilever beams. In this process, two masks are needed in order to obtain free-end beams and the alignment between two exposures is always time consuming with limited accuracy. Two new techniques, inclined UV shadow mask lithography and inclined UV proximity lithography, have been illustrated here for fabricating free-end SU-8 cantilever beams, which eliminate the precise alignment step required in our previous work (Ling et al. in Microsyst Technol 15(3):429–435, 2009). In the inclined UV shadow mask lithography approach, the SU-8 cantilever beams without connected ends are formed by using one main mask and two shadow masks. Each shadow mask is used to selectively transfer one of the two separated patterns on main mask into SU-8 layer at +45° and −45°, respectively. In the inclined UV proximity lithography approach, a proper proximity gap between mask and SU-8 surface is obtained by using a 50 μm thick Mylar sheet, so that the exposing light paths that formed connected beam ends will fall inside the proximity layer instead of the SU-8. In this way, the desired open-end cantilever structures can be achieved. In this paper, the principles and the fabrication procedures of the proposed techniques are demonstrated and the preliminary results are discussed.