Research and Development of Adhesive Bonding Device for Microfabrication

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The fabrication of microsized structures has been realized by the use of IC technology, such as photofabrication, and fine gears and shafts have been fabricated on a Si substrate. Although structures with sizes of approximately 10 μm to 100 μm can be observed using the current technology, structures with sizes in the range from 10 μm to 100 μm are considered to be difficult to manipulate ; thus, this range is called the "unmanipulable" range. Therefore, manipulators for handling structures of these sizes are required. However, if microsized structures are handled using these manipulators and assembled by fitting them into each other to form a micromechanism, an extremely small dimensional tolerance is required, which is difficult to realize. We proposed that microsized structures can be assembled by adhesive bonding because of the scale effect, and hence evaluated a method for fixing microsized structures using an adhesive.In 2004, a fabrication method of discharge nozzles and their shapes were studied. From various experiments, we found that a glass thin tube can be fabricated relatively simply and effectively by heating and rapid withdrawal. Subsequently, the effect of the inner diameter of the discharge nozzle on the size of droplets discharged was studied. The size of droplets discharged decreased when the inner diameter of the discharge nozzle was reduced from 10 μm to 2 μm. In particular, when the inner diameter was 5 μm or less, the size of the droplet decreased markedly, and a droplet with a diameter of 10 μm or less was observed. In 2005, by devising the nozzle shape, the discharge of droplets with a diameter of approximately 1 μm was realized. In conclusion, we established the fabrication method and effective shape of the nozzle of an adhesive discharge device, which are essential for the adhesive bonding of microsized structures.