Laser-Scan Lithography and Electrolytic Etching for Fabricating Meshed Pipes of Stainless Steel

Abstract

Numerous micro-slits were opened penetrating through fine stainless steel pipes using laser-scan lithography and electrolytic etching, and meshed pipes were fabricated. Such micro-fabrication technology will be useful for developing bio-medical micro-stents, syringe needles, mesh filters, and others. As original materials, stainless-steel pipes with an outer diameter of 100 μm, a thickness of 20 μm and a length of 40 mm were used. At first, each pipe coated with a positive resist was exposed to a beam spot of violet laser, and multi-slit patterns were delineated by scanning and intermittently moving the pipe in the axial and rotational directions. After the development, each pipe masked by the resist film except the slit pattern parts were etched individually. Electrolytic etching was applied by using an aqueous solution of NaNO3 and NH 4 Cl as an electrolyte. As a result, mesh structures composed of four linearly arrayed 22 slits arranged at every 90° circumferential angle were fabricated.

Fabrication of Stent-Like Mesh Structures Using Synchronized Scan Rotation Lithography and Wet Etching

“…Concerning exposure systems for printing or delineating patterns on a cylindrical specimen, various research results have been reported [14][15][16][17][18]. The authors have developed some systems also except the above mentioned ones [19][20][21][22]. However, the system used for this research had a large advantage that arbitrary intricate patterns were printable in a same exposure time without depending on the pattern density and complicatedness.…”

Feasibility of stereophonic projection lithography applying a parabolic magic mirror system

“…[11][12][13] The authors have been developing various lithography tools for printing or delineating 10-50 μm patterns on cylindrical surfaces of pipes or shafts with diameters between 100 μm and 6 mm also. [14][15][16][17][18] In addition, exposure tools for forming patterns on inner surfaces of pipes or concave surfaces are also developed. 19,20) However, it was difficult to print patterns on arbitrarily curved surfaces such as spherical, barrel-like, paddle-like, waved, and freely warped ones.…”