Microfabrication Processes and Applications of Liquid Photosensitive Materials

Abstract

This chapter comprehensively presents the various microfabrication schemes and applications that are largely based the photosensitive liquid materials over several decades. Nowadays, those types of photosensitivity-based materials are no doubt playing a significant role for precise fabrication of diverse components and devices at the micro- to nanometer scale. Herein the contents are systematically organized as below. First, the intimate fusion of liquid with light and its demands for development of multidisciplinary technologies are introduced in Section 6.1, subsequently followed by review of fundamental principles with characterization of materials, photoinduced polymerization and miniaturization of objects in Section 6.2. Furthermore, Section 6.3 concisely describes several developed schemes of microfabrication existing at present, such as photolithography, soft lithography, light stereolithography and inkjet printing, for implementation of photosensitive liquid materials. Section 6.4 illustrates a variety of industrial applications closely associated with those above schemes, which include microactuators, microsensors, microfluidic components, optical components, medical devices and other complex three-dimensional microsystems. These are promising to be further explored and developed in the 21st century. Finally, we summarize with conclusions and future outlook in Section 6.5.

AM of three‐dimensional spongy microstructures for a piezoelectric sprayer

“…Furthermore, based on conventional technologies of microelectro-mechanical systems, the fluidic flow can be continuously generated and transported in microscale using microactuators and channels. On the other hand, 3D-printed microfluidics [6] has been developed for the solid freeform fabrication of complex microstructures in three-dimensional (3D) state by exploring a variety of printing methods and materials [7,8]. Among them, compared to other additive manufacturing (AM) techniques using ink and light [9][10][11], the fused deposition modelling (FDM) first developed by Crump [12] is frequently used for manufacturing process in recent research due to many advantages such as simple fabrication, high flexibility, low-cost, and eco-friendly materials [13][14][15].…”