| Devices and structures with micrometer and nanometer characteristic scale are playing an increasingly important role in a variety of fields such as electronics, micro-fluidics and biotechnology, and are being used in applications such as tissue engineering scaffolds, drug-delivery devices and sensors and actuators for micro-electronics and micro-electromechanical systems. These micro/nano devices have a higher operational efficiency, consume lesser power and have better sensitivity than their macro scale counterparts.;Large scale in parallel fabrication of these micro/nano devices enable them to be used in a wide variety of applications economically. The research done as a part of this doctoral thesis focuses on fabricating integrated processing elements that make the large scale parallel fabrication of these micro/nano devices possible. These processing elements, namely large scale nozzle arrays and micro-positioning platforms, are fabricated using MEMS based technologies.;Extreme scalability in the size of the nozzle arrays along with sub-micron nozzle orifice sizes are achieved by exploiting the material etch rate differences between the substrate and the nozzle membrane material under dry etching conditions.;The micro-positioning platforms, each with a size less than a dime, have designs based on low degree of freedom parallel kinematic mechanisms. This implementation of parallel kinematic mechanisms at micro-scales imparts high structural stiffness, natural frequency and extended operating workspaces to these stages; properties that are extremely important for optimal use of these stages in micro/nano manipulation and positioning.;Applications of these integrated processing elements have been demonstrated by using them to print micro/nano scale patterns using the electro-hydrodynamic (EHD) printing process. |
