Mass Production of Microdevices with Extreme Aspect Ratios by Electroforming

A new technology (L1GA)- for fabricating microdevices is being developed at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center, West Germany.l In the UGA process, synchrotron radiation lithography, electroforming, and plastic molding are employed as structure-generating techniques. Synchrotron radiation lithography and plastic molding serve to produce plastic microdevices; metallic microdevices are fabricated exclusively by electroforming? Microdevices with dimensions in the submicrometer range can be produced by UGA and thus correspond to the smallest devices used in modem semiconductor circuits. Heights to 0.5 mm can be achieved with height-to-width aspect ratios of 100:1000. Another characteristic of these microdevices is the exact parallelism of the structural walls.