Micro and nano–manufacturing process chains: maturity assessment and bulk metallic glass enabled manufacturing routes

The utilisation of process chains is considered as a way forward to achieve cost effective and high throughput production of miniaturised devices. However there are no methodologies to analyse systematically process chains and thus to inform their development and design new ones for microfabrication. Thus, this research first proposes a methodology for assessing the maturity of micro and nano- manufacturing (MNM) technologies and their interfaces in process chains. The applicability and benefits of using it as a tool for assessing the maturity levels of individual processes and chains is demonstrated on existing and emerging MNM platforms. Then, to address the growing requirements for function and length scale integration (FLSI) in devices, two bulk metallic glass (BMG) enabled master-making process chains were designed and validated for serial replication of polymer components with sub-micron and micro size functional features. The empirical research proved that the use of BMG workpieces with their intrinsic atomic level homogeneity enables the integration of complementary MNM technologies for achieving FLSI in replication inserts. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that such process chains can be successfully employed for producing inserts incorporating both micro and nano- scale features that can be utilised for serial production of polymerbased FLSI devices