Advances of focused ion beam in micromachining technology

Abstract

The applications of focused ion beam (FIB) technology in micromachining has advantages over other micromachining technologies, such as high feature resolution, capable markless process, rapid prototyping and adaptive for various materials and geometries. FIB direct-writing techniques are explored for their excellent abilities in micromachining. In addition to FIB technology and its principles for imaging, milling and deposition, a typical FIB system is presented. The key to FIB direct-writing technology is to operate a FIB with a proper beam size, shape, current and energy to remove or add a required amount of material from a pre-defined location in a controlled manner. In this way, high-precision and complicated three-dimensional structures with controlled profiles can be fabricated. Several examples of using milling technique for making high-quality microdevices or high-precision microcomponents for optical and other applications are given. The demonstration of milling a narrow readout gap at an oblique angle on a microaccelerometer shows a FIB's application on a small but accurate post-processing step on a micromechanical device. The diffractive optical element (DOE) with continuous relief and submicron feature size fabricated by FIB milling is also presented to prove high resolution and accurate relief control. Furthermore, FIB milling is used to shape a variety of cutting tools with extremely precise dimensions and complex tool face shapes.