Towards Electron-Beam-Driven Soft / Polymer Fiber Microrobotics for Vacuum Conditions

High-vacuum versus ‘‘environmental’’ electron beam deposition

Electron beam deposition ~EBD! provides an inexpensive way to fabricate nanostructures of various materials in a scanning electron microscope ~SEM!. However, the purity of metals deposited from an organometallic precursor gas is impaired by simultaneously deposited carbon coming both from the organometallic molecule and the residual contamination gas in the SEM chamber. We discuss carbon-contam...

Dopant Driven Electron Beam Lithography

Laser - Driven Electron Acceleration in Infinite Vacuum

I first review basic models for laser-plasma interaction that explain electron acceleration and beam confinement in plasma. Next, I discuss ponderomotive electron acceleration in infinite vacuum, showing that the transverse scattering angle of the accelerated electron may be kept small with a proper choice of parameters. I then analyze the direct (a.k.a. linear) acceleration of an electron in i...

Tapered Polymer Fiber Sensors for Reinforced Concrete Beam Vibration Detection

In this study, tapered polymer fiber sensors (TPFSs) have been employed to detect the vibration of a reinforced concrete beam (RC beam). The sensing principle was based on transmission modes theory. The natural frequency of an RC beam was theoretically analyzed. Experiments were carried out with sensors mounted on the surface or embedded in the RC beam. Vibration detection results agreed well w...

Electron-beam lithography for polymer bioMEMS with submicron features

We present a method for submicron fabrication of flexible, thin-film structures fully encapsulated in biocompatible polymer poly (chloro-p-xylylene) (Parylene C) that improves feature size and resolution by an order of magnitude compared with prior work. We achieved critical dimensions as small as 250 nm by adapting electron beam lithography for use on vapor deposited Parylene-coated substrates...