Abstract

The major developments in today’s world are made at a submicron level and the biggest challenge today is to be able to fabricate components at increasingly lower dimensions. Our daily routine depend on microcomponents and we can find them in the accelerometers of ours car airbag system and mobile phone, for instance. The micro fabrication has its basis in microelectronics and most of research in this field has been focused on microelectronics devices. Nevertheless, the demand for micro-components is increasing in the most various areas like automotive, aviation, electronics, bio-medical, energy and optical fields. It includes systems for microanalysis, micro-volume reactors, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and optical components among others. The widening of rage of applications of micro components brings the necessity to machine different materials, many of them difficult to machine, posing challenges to conventional machining processes. For example, the materials that need to be micromachined can be as diverse as a metallic, ceramic or polymeric: super alloys, titanium, gold, silver, aluminum, copper, chromium, tungsten, nickel, platinum, carbides, silicon, silicon nitride, titanium nitride, etc.

Many machining processes are available and should be selected according to the characteristics of the material that is to be machined. They can work solely as stand-alone (single function) machining tools or they can be combined in groups of two or more processes that are utilized simultaneously (hybrid-micromachining processes).