Ultrasonic cutting tool for fabricating interfaces to microfluidic systems and components for phtonic structures

随着技术的进步，电气、机械和微流体系统的组合经常出现在一个组件封装中。设计和测试这样的“片上系统”开发是当前微电子机械(MEM)系统研究的前沿。这笔赠款的目的是为我们的纳米系统研究小组和实验室增加一台超声波切割机。超声波切割机用于从较大的脆性材料晶片中获得标准尺寸的圆盘或矩形样品。通常，切割器被用来从硅晶片和玻璃片中获得圆盘--作为电子显微镜样品准备工具的一部分。我们打算将此工具用于完全不同的目的。他说，我们集团日益增长的优势之一是我们在新兴的微流体领域所做的努力。在微流控系统中，使用大小类似于人类头发的通道来传输液体样品。其中许多设备被集成为新型芯片实验室传感器的一部分。为了将这些系统连接到“真实世界”的刻度管(10倍-100倍大)，我们需要一种工具，能够可靠地切割管道可以连接到的接入端口--并且准确地实现这一点，以便“现实世界”通道与微流体系统相匹配。超声波切割机是这方面的理想之选，因为它的设计是为了切割这些微流控系统被蚀刻到的材料。此外，我们将在不损坏设备本身的情况下，将切割器用于表面声波(SAW)谐振器和滤波器等拆包设备。这将使这些设备能够进一步集成，并可应用于我们寻求与定制设计的电子产品集成的MEM系统。最后，我们将使用切割机从电介质材料(如蓝宝石)中切割出几组圆盘和平板，这些材料将被集成到新型(光子)超材料中。他说，为了实现这些目标，我们需要超声波切割机和所要求的刀具选择。该仪器将由至少3000名教职员工和10多名学生使用，他们的前沿研究重点是微电子行业内正在增长的新技术。

With advancing technology, combinations of electrical, mechanical and microfluidic systems are frequently found in one component package. Designing and testing "system-on-chip" developments such as these is the forefront of current research in micro-electromechanical (MEM) systems. The purpose of this grant is to add an Ultrasonic Cutter to our NanoSystems research group and laboratory. An ultrasonic cutter is used to obtain standard-sized disc or rectangular samples from larger wafers of brittle materials. Typically the cutter is used to obtain discs from silicon wafers and glass slides - as a part of a suite of sample preparation tools for electron microscopy. We intend to use this tool for a completely different purpose.    One of the growing strengths of our group is our efforts in the emerging field of microfluidics. In microfluidic systems, channels similar in size to a human hair are used to transport liquid samples. Many of these devices are integrated as part of novel lab-on-chip sensors. In order to connect these systems to "real-world" scale tubing (10x - 100x bigger), we need a tool that will reliably cut an access port into which the tube can connect - and do this accurately so that the "real-world" channel is matched to the microfluidic system. The ultrasonic cutter is ideal for this as it is designed to cut through the materials into which these microfluidic systems are etched. Additionally, we will use the cutter as for depackaging devices such as Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) resonators and filters without damaging the devices themselves. This will enable further integration of these devices and can be applied to MEM systems which we seek to integrate with custom-designed electronics. Finally, we will use the cutter to cut sets of discs and slabs from dielectric materials such as sapphire that will be integrated into novel (photonic) metamaterials.    In order to accomplish these aims, we require the ultrasonic cutter and the selection of cutting tools requested. This instrument will be used by at least 3 faculty members and over 10 students whose leading-edge research focuses on the new technologies that are growing within the microelectronics industry.