Methods for the microfabrication of magnesium

Author

Tsang, Melissa ; Herrault, Florian ; Shafer, Richard H. ; Allen, Mark G.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Biomed. Eng., Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA, USA

fYear

2013

fDate

20-24 Jan. 2013

Firstpage

347

Lastpage

350

Abstract

The mechanical and electrochemical properties of magnesium are favorable for biomedical and energy storage applications. However, magnesium microfabrication has been limited to sub-micron-thick film technologies (i.e., sputtering or evaporation). This paper presents three magnesium microfabrication approaches for thicknesses greater than 10 μm: 1) laser-cutting and 2) chemical etching of 70-μm-thick commercial magnesium foil; and 3) through-mold electroplating of magnesium from non-aqueous solution. The fabrication technologies are compared on minimum feature size, morphology, uniformity, composition and electrical resistivity. Preliminary results confirmed that the 50-μm-thick electroplated material composition compared favorably with commercial magnesium foil. The measured electrical resistivities of commercial and electrodeposited magnesium were 5.3 μΩ·cm and 8.7 μΩ·cm, respectively. Thick magnesium microstructures can be fabricated through several means to serve a broad range of MEMS-based applications.

Keywords

electrical resistivity; electroplating; etching; laser beam cutting; magnesium; microfabrication; micromechanical devices; MEMS-based applications; Mg; biomedical application; chemical etching; electrical resistivity; electrochemical properties; electroplated material composition; energy storage application; evaporation; feature size; laser-cutting; magnesium foil; magnesium microfabrication method; magnesium microstructures; mechanical properties; morphology; nonaqueous solution; size 50 mum; size 70 mum; sputtering; submicron-thick film technologies; through-mold electroplating; Chemical lasers; Chemicals; Etching; Magnesium; Microstructure; Surface morphology;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS), 2013 IEEE 26th International Conference on

Conference_Location

Taipei

ISSN

1084-6999

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-5654-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MEMSYS.2013.6474249

Filename

6474249