SUMMARY
Current microfabrication materials include silicon, a wide variety of metals, dielectrics, and some polymers. Because of the low cost and high processing flexibility that polymers generally have, expanding the use of polymers in microfabrication would benefit the microfabrication community, enabling new routes towards goals such as low-cost 3D microfabrication. This work describes two main unconventional uses of polymers in microfabrication. The first unconventional use is as a carrier material in the self-assembly (SA) of millimeter-scale parts in which functional electronic components and electrical interconnects were cast into 5 mm cubes of Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA). The second unconventional use is as a non-flat micromold for an alumina ceramic and as transfer material for multiple layers of micropatterned carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Both of these uses demonstrate 3D low-cost microfabrication routes.