Chemical liquid deposition process for microstructure fabrication

Scientists and engineers are currently moving into a new era to develop precise and intelligent mini-structures and microsystems. The study of mini-structures and microsystems is a rapidly growing area of research with a great potential to accomplish useful tasks in numerous applications. In this paper, a new fabrication technology for microstructures based on the chemical liquid deposition (CLD) is presented. This technology is based on the following principles: micro-droplets of a cold (room temperature) solution or liquid reactant are sprayed from a nozzle and make contact with a hot substrate, the droplets will evaporate, decompose, or react, and then the reacted solid products will deposit on the substrate. By controlling the motion of the nozzle and the spray time, a desired 3D microstructure of the deposited material can be formed through a layer-by-layer scanning technique. The working principle, available materials as well as the process control and modeling is discussed and some preliminary results are presented.