Development of a Manufacturing Process for Ceramic Microstructures by Using Micro Photoforming (1st Report)

Micro photoforming is considered to be a useful and promising technique for manufacturing microstructures or micromechanisms. But the materials used in usual photoforming methods are restricted to UV photohardenable resins, and their properties are usually found unsatisfactory. In this paper, the authors proposed a new application of micro photoforming for manufacturing ceramic microstructures. According to the proposal, a liquid mixture, which is made by blending a photohardenable resin and ceramic powders, is used to photoform microstructures in the green state. The resin in the microstructures can be burnt out by so called deresining at appropriate temperature between 450°C and 600°C, and finally the ceramic microstructures can be obtained after sintering at higher temperature. In this paper, the authors also describe the instrumentation for micro photoforming, report some fundamental results that show the promising feasibility of micro photoforming for making three dimensional microstructures in the green state.