Ceramic tape technology was initially developed for efficiently manufacturing interconnects and hybrid microelectronics circuitry through sequential printing and firing of conductor, resistor and/or dielectric paste formulations onto a substrate. Recently, it has been recognized that ceramic tapes can also be used as an efficient and convenient medium for the manufacturing of meso-scale electro-mechanical systems. In the green (pre-fired) state, the ceramic tapes consist of alumina particles, glass frit, and organic binder; and they are soft, pliable, and easily machinable. In each layer, one can machine flow conduits and mechanical devices and print electronic circuits. Very many layers can be stacked together to form complicated, three-dimensional, monolithic structures. These layers can be laminated and sintered. During the sintering process, the organic binder burns out, the glass flows, and the material hardens. It is possible to cast tapes of various ceramic composition to obtain desirable properties. The paper describes mechanical, chemical, and thermal machining of prefired Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramic Tapes (LTCC); the dimensional changes occurring during the lamination and sintering processes; the use of sacrificial layers to prevent the sagging of internal suspended structures during the lamination and firing processes; the bonding of tapes to alumina, silicon, glass, and metals to form a hybrid technology; and the manufacturing of microchannels and a flow sensor in ceramic tapes. Packaging is widely considered to be the Achilles heel of silicon-based MEMS technology since it is difficult to interface silicon MEMS devices with each other and fabricate relatively large, three-dimensional structures. Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramic Tapes (LTCC), the packaging material of choice in the electronics industry, hold the promise of alleviating some of these difficulties.

Currently most MEMS designers begin the geometric design of a new device by creating the masks that would lead to a geometric model. At the macro level, this is analogous to generating a geometric model from the tool paths, which would be a very difficult task. In contrast to MEMS designers, designers of macro devices have the advantage of starting with a geometric model and being able to directly visualize or manipulate their designs. The geometric model is then queried to generate the process specific data. In the case of MEMS, there is no systematic means to generate the mask data after the geometric model of a MEMS device has been refined through behavioral simulations. This paper focuses on automatically generating masks, given a geometric model of the MEMS device and the process sequence (referred to here as the inverse problem). This necessitates the systematic solution of the forward problem, which involves automatically generating a geometric model of the MEMS device given the masks. A systematic and implementation-independent framework for the geometric modeling of MEMS is presented in order to solve the forward and inverse problems for general surface-micro-machined devices. However, all implementations and examples are two-dimensional, i.e., they do not deal with complexity in the third dimension.

Ceramic tape and thick film technologies provide a convenient and flexible means for the fabrication of three-dimensional flow conduits integrated with sensing and actuating elements. In their pre-fired (green) state, the ceramic tapes are soft, pliable, and easily machinable. CNC, laser, or chemical machining can be used to fabricate fluid conduits. Various conduit geometries were machined ranging from straight conduit segments with various angles between them to arcs to spirals. Subsequent to the machining process, tapes with different planar features were aligned, stacked, and laminated to form complex three-dimensional flow paths. The paper describes the fabrication techniques and capabilities. Additionally, results of preliminary liquid flow measurements and simulations are reported for the pressure drop as a function of conduit geometry and flow rate in straight and L-shaped channels.