Hi,

If damage during coating with a protective resist-type material, or if
stiction might be a problem during removal of the protective material,
another option could be femtosecond pulsed laser cutting. This has
negligible mechanical coupling into the substrate and the heat is remarkably
well confined spatially.

Google search will turn up a bunch of places using this technique. Here is a
reference to a recent conference paper from a group at Penn State whose
laser I worked with previously, with excellent results:

"Femtosecond Micromachining Applications for Electro-Optic Components", K.H.
Leong, et al., Proceedings, 51st IEEE Electronic Components and Technology
Conference, 29 May-1 June 2001, pp. 210 - 214

Regards,

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: mems-talk-bounces@memsnet.org [mailto:mems-talk-bounces@memsnet.org]
On Behalf Of Torsten Wagner
Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2006 5:16 AM
To: General MEMS discussion
Subject: Re: [mems-talk] Cutting chips with fragile free-standing devices
intosmall pieces

Hi,

never faced this problem just got a idea during reading your text.
Dependent on your kind of structure, you might try to packaging the
whole structure with a photoresist or something like this.

Then you can handle your structure, store them easily etc. and just if
you need them dissolve the protecting layer.

However, its hardly depends on the other materials on your chip and on
the geometry.