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This study presents a novel design to fabricate the hole array mold parts for 12 ports of the MT-type ferrule using a LIGA process. This fabrication technique can reduce the positioning error efficiently when making the mold assembly. The present design also makes replacing the mold parts convenient. The hole fabrication consists of a single x-ray exposure and development process, Ni-Co (nickel-cobalt) electroforming, and microinjection molding for a fast-curing epoxy liquid compound. Compared to conventional transfer molding technology, the present method for microinjection reduces the cycle time to about 35 s and saves on raw material. The 12 ports in the MT-type optical fiber ferrule were designed using the JIS C5981 and IEC60874-16 specifications. The diameters of the fiber holes had errors of 1 μm, and their position was smaller than 2 μm; these dimensions conform to the single-mode specifications. The proposed LIGA technique has been proven to be effective in reducing the positioning error in mold assembly construction. For the single-mode MT-type connector in the present study, the mean insertion loss (IL) was lower than that shown in the reported literature while the mean return loss (RL) was higher. The uniformities exhibited in IL and RL are much better than those previously reported.

This paper presents an integrated microtechnology for the fabrication of a 3-D structure nozzle plate for a 1200-dotsper-inch (dpi) inkjet printhead. The 3-D structure nozzle plate contains a fluidic channel, nozzle chamber, and 432 conical nozzles whose taper angle is about 9 • -11 • to vertical. When the integrated 3-D structure nozzle plate is packaged onto the printhead, there is no need for alignment between the nozzle and the ink chamber, as there is when conventional production methods are employed. Therefore, misalignment of the nozzle and ink chamber is avoided, thereby reducing the cost by up to 50%, as well as greatly improving the print quality. This paper demonstrated the integration of excimer laser technology and microinjection molding to fabricate a 3-D structure nozzle plate. Excimer laser technology was used to create the high aspect ratio pattern with a tapered angle structure, and then, high-hardness Ni-Co alloy microelectroforming technology was used to achieve micromold insertion of the nozzle plate. In the microinjection molding, a variotherm control system was utilized for rapid heating to the mold temperature, which must be close to the glass temperature to ensure a good replication of the nozzle plate. The experiment resulted in the fabrication of a 3-D structure nozzle plate 2.7 mm in width and 10.8 mm in length. The total thickness was not more than 80 ± 2 μm (ink channels, nozzle chamber, and nozzle plate), and the diameter and pitch of the nozzle holes were 25 ± 2 μm for the outlet, 43 ± 2 μm for the inlet, 84 ± 2 μm in pitch, and 30 ± 2 μm for the ink channel. Using this 3-D structure nozzle plate improved the competitiveness of the inkjet printhead. We have demonstrated the manufacture of the main parts of the 3-D structure nozzle plate for a 1200-dpi printhead; the aforementioned fabrication process yields satisfactory results and can be applied to commercial production.[ 2008-0079]Index Terms-Excimer laser, Lithographie Galvanoformung Abformung (LIGA), microelectroforming, microelectromechanical systems, microinjection molding, nozzle plate.