Printing single pixel wide micro-patterns with Mono1

One of potential applications using high resolution 3D resin printers like Mono1 is affordable alternative to patterning micro-structures. Usually micropatterns are fabricated using equipment for manufacturing semi-conductor devices. Of course they are expensive and hard to access or process. I've got several requests how well Mono1 can do this. 

Here's a brief test and you can get a rough estimate about Mono1's capability in the area of microfabrication. Let's check out test results first. 

I printed narrow and long extrusions using B9C cherry resin. The designed widths are 25, 50, 75, 100, 150, and 200 microns and those widths were converted into pixel widths with 1, 2, 3, 4, 6,  and 8 pixels in slice images. I've set the xy resolution to 23 microns, so some loss happened during creating slice images. The designed height was 50 microns and sliced layer thickness was 10 microns, so the only 5 layers are used to create the extrusions. Since the width is very narrow compared to normal 3D objects, I used twice longer exposure time than usual prints. 

Okay, the test results are not fantastic. It can't print single micron wide patterns :-) However this test shows that Mono1 can print micropatterns down to couple of tens micron wide which corresponds to one or two pixel patterns. The slope angle of side walls also needs more optimization, but overall, very narrow and shallow patterns can be printed with Mono1 without going to a clean room. 

Please treat this test as a starting point for your microfabrication experiments. I believe there are many rooms of improvement and you'll achieve better microstructures through process or material optimization.

If you're in the market for affordable high resolution printing, please contact us for any possibility and make your microfabrication easy and simple. 

Thanks!