Demand for Micro Fabrication

Today’s engineering requirements drive R&D efforts to design and build smaller and smaller components and devices: smaller yet more powerful, lighter weight yet more robust, smarter (sensing, controlling, and manipulating at finer length scales) yet affordable. Creare pursues miniaturization technology benefits by developing both miniature devices and micro fabrication techniques to produce them. Our projects span such diverse applications as micro fluidics for drug delivery, ultra precise accelerometers for spacecraft, and corrosion sensor arrays for aging aircraft. For example, we are improving communication and hearing protection by developing an ear plug device with tiny speakers and microphones that cancels incoming environmental noise and simultaneously transmits critical communication signals to the ear drum. We are also improving medical care by developing miniature ultrasound arrays that enable faster, higher resolution imaging of the front layers of the eye, shallow skin tumors, and artery blockages.

We often adapt established micro fabrication techniques, such as photolithography, thin film processing, and silicon micromachining, and combine them in novel ways with macroscopic fabrication techniques, such as precision grinding, wire sawing, and epoxy casting. The resulting devices may be entirely micrometer-size, such as a MEMS device, or several centimeters in size with micrometer-size features. Designing and building to ever smaller dimensions offers continuing challenge in R&D!

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