Microfabrication limitations

Better chemistry through confinement economy of scale limits and expenditure of scale-up micro reactors origin from microfabrication expert opinions general advantages of micro flow hybrid construction industry s efforts chip micro reactors numbering-up vision of computer-like chemical workstation [205]. 

In general, optical-based pH measurement techniques require relatively expensive and cumbersome instruments, and their sophisticated method cannot be easily carried out for routine assay. Interfering contact and reactions of the dye molecules, particularly considering in-vivo measurements, cannot be excluded [34], Some other possible factors, such as a weaker signal at shorter response times, complications in microfabrication, and difficulties in attaching the chemical or biological agents to the small fiber tip, are potential limitations for the application of these optical sensors to in-vivo measurements in micro environments [35]. 

The third microhotplate introduced in Sect. 4.3 was designed to extend the operation temperature limit imposed by the CMOS-metallization contacts in the heated area. A new heater design was devised, and a microfabrication sequence that enables the realization of Pt temperature sensors and Pt-electrodes was developed. This microhotplate was also monolithically integrated with circuitry as presented in Sect. 5.2, and operating temperatures of up to 500 °C have been achieved. 

Two types of ion source produce high enough brightness (> 106 A/cm2.ster., 20 keV) for them to be considered for semiconductor fabrication applications the field ion source (56) and the liquid metal source (57,58). The field ion source produces relatively small energy spread (<3 eV) and when combined with a short focal length (< 1 cm) electrostatic focusing system should be able to produce beam sizes as small as 10 nm with adequate current (10-11 amp) for laboratory microfabrication experiments. As with field emission electron sources, the field ion source only produces a limited total current and the maximum beam current is limited to about 1 10 amp. 

Resist requirements for microfabrication are similar, regardless of the exposure technology. While the general requirements have been discussed in many articles (2,3) it is instructive here to review the more important requirements, particularly in view of the special limitations imposed by the need to fabricate fine line VLSI devices. 

Volume has been the most significant limitation on the size and construction of microreference electrodes, a limitation that complements the small size of the microfabricated ion sensors (Section 6.23.2). There have been many attempts to prepare a liquid junction free microreference electrode that would be comparable in size with the integrated ion sensors, such as ion-sensitive field-effect transistors (Section 6.23.2). These attempts have followed broadly three tines of reasoning scaling down of a macroscopic reference electrode (Comte and Janata, 1978 Smith and Scott, 1986), elimination of the reference solution compartment while preserving the internal element structure (e.g., Ag/AgCl), and utilization of inert materials such as polyfluorinated hydrocarbons and the tike, particularly in the so-called reference FET configuration. 

The ion controlled diode was an initial attempt to isolate the active electronics from the chemical solution by producing a metallic-like via that allows the isolation of the chemically sensitive region from an area where electronic components could be deposited (41,42). However, the limited precision of the non-standard microfabrication techniques made this process difficult and costly. Since this device is still essentially a capacitive membrane-insulator-semiconductor structure like the chemfet, the same problems of hermetic isolation of the gate remain. 

A variation on this approach used multifilament coextrusion, so-called microfabrication by coextrusion (MFCX) . A limitation of the single-filament process is the size of the filament. The rheological properties of the polymer/ ceramic blends make spinning fibers smaller than 250 pm very difficult. Additionally, spooling fine-diameter fibers is quite challenging. The MFCX is shown schematically in Fig. 1.3. The setup is the same as that used to spin fibers except that the spinneret is replaced with an extrusion die with a diameter between 1 mm and 6 mm. Two separate extrusion steps are used. In the first step, coarse primary filaments are extruded from the feedrod (Fig. 

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