GALVANOPLATING AND SACRIFICIAL LAYERS FOR SURFACE MICROMACHINING

For advanced surface micromachining 3D UV-Microforming delivers excellent results. This low-cost technology, a combination of UV patterning of very thick photoresist layers and and moulding of the resulting patterns by galvanoplating, opens a wide range of applications. If combined with sacrificial layer technology, this new technique offers a wide variety of smart processing methods. Especially the generation of sacrificial layers by electrodeposition itself enables the construction of micro components with high precision from the mum to the mm range. 3D UV-Microforming allows the use of materials with interesting properties which could not be provided by standard processes. Furthermore, this method can be carried out directly on pre-processed chips. The practical application of the technology is demonstrated on micro channels, micro coils and micro switches.