APPLICATION OF AN ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING ELECTRON-MICROSCOPE TO MICROMECHANICAL FABRICATION

Current advanced methods of micromechanical fabrication require expens ive tooling or are restricted to the fabrication of lateral-shaped mic rostructures. To overcome these limitations, recent efforts have used microscale additive freeform fabrication (AEF) methods to prototype mi cromechanical structures. However, these laser-based methods are limit ed in resolution. To improve the resolution of microscale AFF methods, an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) was used to prot otype several electron-beam (EB)-based microscale AFF processes. The r esults showed that the ESEM is capable of demonstrating process feasib ility for EB-based microscale AFF.