AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Near-field Electrospray Printing of Polymer Derived Ceramics
CHENG LI, Hongxu Duan, Weiwei Yang, Johan Rodriguez, Brandon Lojewski, Linan An, Weiwei Deng, University of Central Florida
Abstract Number: 682 Working Group: Nanoparticles and Materials Synthesis
Abstract Ceramic MEMS sensors are potentially game-changing devices in many applications in high-temperature and corrosive environments, where the use of conventional MEMS materials such as silicon is prohibited. However, micro-fabrication of ceramic MEMS sensors remains a major technical challenge. Polymer derived ceramic (PDC) is a promising material that enables new ways to fabricate such devices. Here we report a method to directly print micro PDC patterns using near-field electrospray. We demonstrated that the highly viscous ceramic precursor liquids can be printed reliably without any clogging issues. The spray self-expansion due to Coulombic repulsion force amongst charged droplets can be suppressed by decreasing the droplet residence time in space. Further, we derived an approximate spray expansion model which predicts the line-width and the prediction is in decent agreement with the experimental results at relatively high driving fields (>1 kV/mm). We demonstrated printed PDC 1D features as narrow as 35 µm. Moreover, after pyrolysis of PDC at 1100 °C in nitrogen, amorphous alloys of silicon, carbon and nitrogen (SiCN) are obtained and the sample keeps its integrity and shows no signs of cracks. Our study shows that the maskless near-field electrospray is a promising tool to directly print micro patterns of PDC for high temperature MEMS sensor applications.