Fabrication of micro and nano devices is of prime significance to the area of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). Attempts have been made to accommodate high performance devices in compact units, thus reducing their overall size. There exist a variety of microfabrication techniques including lithography, chemical vapor deposition, and LIGA that are used today. Manufacturing costs associated with these processes can be prohibitive due to cycle time and the precious material loss that occurs during etching operations. These drawbacks become more significant problem when building curved traces and support structures that most occur in 3D space.
To address the problems associated with building 3-dimensional circuits and devices in free space, a unique manufacturing process has been developed. This process utilizes conductive Nano-Particulate Fluid Jets (NPFJ) that are deposited onto a substrate by a Continuous Inkjet (CIJ) printing methodology. In this method, a fluid jet consists of colloidal suspensions of conductors and carrier fluids that are deposited onto a substrate and later sintered at high temperatures to form a homogeneous material. The major contribution of the present research is the investigation, development and optimization of the NPFJ. In this work, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model has been developed to simulate the fluid jet and CIJ process. The modified CIJ printing process involves interaction of three domains namely, electrostatics, structural and fluidics. A coupled field analysis of the piezoelectric membrane that exists in the CIJ print head is conducted to establish the perturbation characteristics applied to the fluid. Interaction of the above three domains is captured within a single model using a (FSI) fluid-structural algorithm which staggers between domains until convergence is attained. A Design of Experiments approach was used to determine trends for the drop formations based on various exciting parameters. Results from these simulations have been validated using an ultra-high-speed camera featuring exposure/delay times from 100 nanoseconds at full sensor resolution.
The results of present research will give manufacturers the freedom to construct 3D devices and circuits that conform to the desired shapes and sizes of products, rather than being limited to present 2D components such as printed circuit boards.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-06132004-162417 |
| Date | 13 September 2004 |
| Creators | Desai, Salil S |
| Contributors | Dr. Ming En Wang, Dr. Marlin Mickle, Dr. Bopaya Bidanda, Dr. Laura Schaefer, Dr. Michael Lovell |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-06132004-162417/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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