Fabrication of fluorinated polyimide microgrids using magnetically controlled reactive ion etching (MC-RIE) and their applications to an ion drag integrated micropump

Magnetically controlled reactive ion etching (MC-RIE) of a fluorinated polyimide substrate achieved etching selectivity of up to 2600, resulting in a smoothly etched surface and structures hundreds of micrometers high having good perpendicularity. This technique is useful for three-dimensional microfabrication. As an example of a typical application, we fabricated an ion drag integrated micropump with microgrid sets consisting of 100 μm high pole-shaped counter-electrode elements arranged like a pair of interleaved combs by using a fluorinated polyimide as the structural material, metallization, and lift-off using a ZnO sacrificial layer. This micropump moved ethanol with a flow rate of about 2.0 nl s^-1 when 200 V was applied to the counter electrodes.