SUMMARY

One of the major challenges in 3-D micromanufacturing is to develop a parallel direct-write manufacturing process for metal microstructures. The realization would promise the development of high aspect ratio structures that could provide precision microscale mechanical and electrical interfaces for a wide range of applications such as electronic testing and bio-sensing. In this study, a self-regulated growth mechanism discovered previously in the meniscus-confined direct-write electrodeposition was exploited to realize the parallel process fabrication of high density area arrays of ultrahigh aspect-ratio solid metal microwire structures. Precision nozzle arrays were developed with MEMS processes and were applied to perform the high throughput parallel process fabrications; underlying physics that enabled this parallel manufacturing process were revealed and formulated to guide the development. We demonstrated this array-based direct-write fabrication with the development of a 20 × 20 high density array of curvilinear metal spirals over 800 μm high with 50 μm pitches and 20 μm in wire diameters. Such high density arrays were structurally and mechanically designed to be potentially appropriate for wafer probe testing applications, which could not otherwise be fabricated with any other existing methods. In addition, a 3-D printing-like process that integrated the concept of discretized manufacturing with meniscus-confined direct-write electrodeposition was developed to enable the fabrication of ultra-high-density and complex-structured 3-D micro/nano structures, as well as a parallel process based 3-D metal printing.