• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.396-401
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• 2008

Minimization of processing time in two-photon stereolithography (TPS) has been one of important issues. Generally, a voxel scanning method (VSM) has been used in TPS because the method is very profitable for the stable fabrication irrespective of jittering and response time of scanning equipments such as a stage and a galvano-scanner. However, supplementary processing time due to the on/off control of a shutter for the generation of each voxel is required inevitably in VSM; by this reason, much processing time takes to fabricate largescale micropatterns and three-dimensional patterns. In this work, a continuous scanning method (CSM), generating patterns by movement of beam focus with a constant speed, is proposed for the improvements of scanning speed and precision in TPS. Some line patterns are fabricated by each scanning method to demonstrate the usefulness of CSM with viewpoints of scanning speed and precision.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.303-309
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• 2008

Dense and fine polymer patterns often collapse, as they come into contact with each other at their protruding tips. Resist pattern collapse depends on the aspect ratio of patterns and the surface tension of rinsing materials. The pattern collapse is a very serious problem in microfabrication, because it is one of the factors which limit the device dimensions. The reasons for the pattern collapse are known as the surface tension of rinse liquid, centrifugal force and rinse liquid flow produced in the developing process. In this work, we tried to evaluate the pattern collapse of three-dimensional microstructures that were fabricated by two-photon induced photopolymerization, and showed the way how to reduce the deformation of microstructures.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.418-421
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• 2005

Three-dimensional (3D) microfabrication process using two-photon polymerization (TPP) is developed to fabricate the curved microstructures in a layer, which can be applied potentially to optical MEMS, nano/micro-devices, etc. A 3D curved structure can be expressed using the same height-contours that are defined by symbolic colors which consist of 14 colors. Then, the designed bitmap figure is transformed into a multi-exposure voxel matrix (MVM). In this work a multi-exposure voxel matrix scanning method is used to generate various heights of voxels according to each laser exposure time that is assigned to the symbolic colors. An objective lens with a numerical aperture of 1.25 is employed to enlarge the variation of a voxel height in the range of 1.2 to 6.4 um which can be controlled easily using the various exposure time. Though this work some 3D curved micro-shapes are fabricated directly to demonstrate the usefulness of the process without a laminating process that is generally required in a micro-stereolithography process.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.26 no.8
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• pp.119-125
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• 2009

Fabrication of a three-dimensional (3D) metallic mold for multi-production of a microstructure was studied to settle the problem of long processing time in 3D microfabrication. To date, complicated 3D microstructures including 3D photonic crystals, 3D microlens array, 3D filter for microfludics, and something else were created successfully using the two-photon polymerization (TPP) which was considered as paving the way to fabricate a real 3D shape in nano/microscale. However, for those fabrications, much processing time and efforts were inevitably required. To solve this issue, a simple and effective way was proposed in this paper; 3D master patterns were prepared using TPP, and then counter-shaped Ni molds were fabricated by electroforming process. By using these molds, 3D microstructures can be reproduced with short-processing time and low-effort comparing to the conventional approach, TPP We report some parameters to fabricate a metallic mold precisely.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.23 no.3 s.180
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• pp.156-162
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• 2006

Direct fabrication of nano patterns has been studied employing a nano-stereolithography (NSL) process. The needs of nano patterning techniques have been intensively increased for diverse applications for nano/micro-devices; micro-fluidic channels, micro-molds. and other novel micro-objects. For fabrication of high-aspect-ratio (HAR) patterns, a thick spin coating of SU-8 process is generally used in the conventional photolithography, however, additional processes such as pre- and post-baking processes and expansive precise photomasks are inevitably required. In this work, direct fabrication of HAR patterns with a high spatial resolution is tried employing two-photon polymerization in the NSL process. The precision and aspect ratio of patterns can be controlled using process parameters of laser power, exposure time, and numerical aperture of objective lens. It is also feasible to control the aspect ratio of patterns by truncation amounts of patterns, and a layer-by-layer piling up technique is attempted to achieve HAR patterns. Through the fabrication of several patterns using the NSL process, the possibility of effective patterning technique fer various N/MEMS applications has been demonstrated.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.24 no.12
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• pp.136-142
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• 2007

Precise fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) self-standing microstructures on thin glass plates via two-photon induced polymerization (TPP) has been an important issue for innovative 3D nanodevices and microdevices. However, there are still issues remaining to be solved, such as building 3D microstructures on opaque materials via TPP and being able to implant them as functional parts onto practical systems. To settle these issues simply and effectively, we propose a contact print lithography (CPL) method using an ultraviolet (UV)-curable polymer layer. We report some of the possibilities and potential of CPL by presenting our results for transplanting 3D microstructures onto large-area substrates and also our examination of some of the effects of the process parameters on successful transplantation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.264-267
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• 2005

A subregional slicing method (SSM) is proposed to increase the nanofabrication efficiency of a nano-stereolithography (NSL) process based on two-photon polymerization (TPP). The NSL process can be used to fabricate 3D microstructures via the accumulation of layers of uniform thickness; hence, the precision of the final 3D microstructure depends on the layer thickness. The use of a uniform layer thickness means that, to fabricate a precise microstructure, a large number of thin slices is inevitably required. leading to long processing times. In the SSM proposed here, however, the 3D microstructure is divided into several subregions on the basis of the geometric slope, and then each of these subregions is uniformly sliced with a layer thickness determined by the geometric slope characteristics of each subregion. Subregions with gentle slopes are sliced with thin layer thicknesses, whereas subregions with steep slopes are sliced with thick layer thicknesses. Here, we describe the procedure of the SSM based on TPP, and discuss the fabrication efficiency of the method through the fabrication of a 3D microstructure.