Plasma ion-beam 3D printing: A novel method for rapid fabrication of customized MEMS sensors

This paper reports a novel method that reduces fabrication period of customized MEMS sensors. A 3D printing method with a high-current plasma focused ion beam (FIB) system was developed and applied to MEMS sensor fabrication for the first time. Capacitive MEMS vibration sensors fabricated using the conventional lithography process and the 3D printing process were compared. The difference in the resonance frequency was as small as 4%. Compared to the conventional process, the 3D printing process reduced the fabrication period by ∼80%.