High-aspect-ratio, 3-D micromachining of carbon-nanotube forests by micro-electro-discharge machining in air
Other conference contribution, 2011

This paper reports micro-electro-discharge machining of vertically aligned carbon nanotube forests for the formation of high-aspect-ratio, three-dimensional microstructures in the material. The developed forest machining method is a dry process performed in air, generating high-frequency pulses of electrical discharge to locally machine the nanotubes in order to create target shapes in a forest. With this approach, forest microstructures can be fabricated to have varying shapes along their height, unachievable with conventional pre-patterned chemical vapor deposition growth techniques. The use of the pulses with a minimized discharge energy defined with 35 V and 10 pF in the discharge generation circuit leads to an aspect ratio of 20 with the smallest feature of 5 μm in forests without disordering the vertical orientation of the nanotubes. Micromachining of multilayer geometries as well as arrayed needle-like microstructures with angled surfaces is demonstrated.

Author

M. Dahmardeh

University of British Columbia (UBC)

Waqas Khalid

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Physical Chemistry

M.S. Mohamed Ali

University of British Columbia (UBC)

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

Y. Choi

Jungwon University

P. Yaghoobi

University of British Columbia (UBC)

A. Nojeh

University of British Columbia (UBC)

K. Takahata

University of British Columbia (UBC)

Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS)

1084-6999 (ISSN)

272-275
978-142449632-7 (ISBN)

Subject Categories

Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering

DOI

10.1109/MEMSYS.2011.5734414

ISBN

978-142449632-7

More information

Latest update

3/29/2018