Fabrication of Arbitrarily Shaped Microelectrodes by Electrochemical Etching

Some conventional machining methods have been developed to machine microelectrodes. However, these methods still require too much time and too many resources. This paper uses electrochemical etching as an alternative method for the simple and cheap fabrication of microelectrodes. Electrochemical etching is usually considered an appropriate method of producing sharp probes. However, it is possible for the entire shape of an electrode to be controlled under certain conditions such as the immersed length, the applied current, and the etching time. After developing a method to estimate the electrode shape, we produced some electrodes by generating etching conditions. Stepped and punch shapes were fabricated. These have applications in the manufacturing of operation utensils, measurement tips, and machining tools. [DOI: 10.1143/JJAP.42.1479]