[mems-talk] Cutting chips with fragile free-standing devices intosmall pieces

[Michael D Martin]

You probably do not have to get so fancy.  You can go to any number of
laser micromachining job shops for excimer cutting.  Try
www.jpsalaser.com

-Mike Martin 
 U. of Louisville  

>>> "gilgunn" <gilgunn at andrew.cmu.edu> 09/05/06 9:22 AM >>>
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