Chapter 1
Controlled and Localized
Electrochemical Microfabrication
with Moving Sub-Micron Rounded Tip
as Tool Electrode
Yufeng Wang and Yongbin Zeng
Abstract Electrochemical reaction has been extensively applied to fabricate
microstructures. Electrochemical micromachining (EMM) with ultrashort voltage
pulses holds great potential in micromachining with sub-micro or nano precision.
In this paper, a moving sub-micro spherical tip was adopted to EMM in processing
microchannels with the controlled profiles and sub-micro accuracy. Both the mechanisms and advantages of EMM using the moving spherical tip were analyzed. The
electric field density distribution on the workpiece surface determined the machined
profile of the microchannels, which has been verified by simulation and experimental methods. An experimental setup for electrochemical micromachining was
developed with a workpiece moving resolution of nanometer scale. Experiments
were conducted to investigate the influences of the applied voltage, initial interelectrode gap, and spherical tip diameter on the machined depth and precision of
EMM. Results showed that microchannels with smaller gap could be processed with
the lower voltage, proper smaller inter-electrode gap, and smaller spherical tip diameter. Microchannels with the width 0.9 μm and side gap 0.12 μm were fabricated
by using applied voltage 4 V, spherical tip diameter 0.8 μm, inter-electrode gap
1.0 μm. Microchannels with the controlled profile and precision could be fabricated
by EMM potentially. Preliminary experiments also demonstrated the possibility of
high-aspect-ratio processing by layer-by-layer EMM with moving spherical tip as
the tool electrode.
Keywords Electrochemical micromachining · Microchannels · Spherical tip ·
Moving path · High aspect ratio
Y. Wang (B)
Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Ningbo 315201, Zhejiang, China
e-mail: wangyufeng@nimte.ac.cn
Y. Zeng
College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and
Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
J. Xu and K. M. Pandey (eds.), Mechanical Engineering and Materials,
Mechanisms and Machine Science 100,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68303-0_1
1
Controlled and Localized
Electrochemical Microfabrication
with Moving Sub-Micron Rounded Tip
as Tool Electrode
Yufeng Wang and Yongbin Zeng
Abstract Electrochemical reaction has been extensively applied to fabricate
microstructures. Electrochemical micromachining (EMM) with ultrashort voltage
pulses holds great potential in micromachining with sub-micro or nano precision.
In this paper, a moving sub-micro spherical tip was adopted to EMM in processing
microchannels with the controlled profiles and sub-micro accuracy. Both the mechanisms and advantages of EMM using the moving spherical tip were analyzed. The
electric field density distribution on the workpiece surface determined the machined
profile of the microchannels, which has been verified by simulation and experimental methods. An experimental setup for electrochemical micromachining was
developed with a workpiece moving resolution of nanometer scale. Experiments
were conducted to investigate the influences of the applied voltage, initial interelectrode gap, and spherical tip diameter on the machined depth and precision of
EMM. Results showed that microchannels with smaller gap could be processed with
the lower voltage, proper smaller inter-electrode gap, and smaller spherical tip diameter. Microchannels with the width 0.9 μm and side gap 0.12 μm were fabricated
by using applied voltage 4 V, spherical tip diameter 0.8 μm, inter-electrode gap
1.0 μm. Microchannels with the controlled profile and precision could be fabricated
by EMM potentially. Preliminary experiments also demonstrated the possibility of
high-aspect-ratio processing by layer-by-layer EMM with moving spherical tip as
the tool electrode.
Keywords Electrochemical micromachining · Microchannels · Spherical tip ·
Moving path · High aspect ratio
Y. Wang (B)
Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Ningbo 315201, Zhejiang, China
e-mail: wangyufeng@nimte.ac.cn
Y. Zeng
College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and
Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
J. Xu and K. M. Pandey (eds.), Mechanical Engineering and Materials,
Mechanisms and Machine Science 100,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68303-0_1
1