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Microbritt’s Hybrid MEchanical Micromanufacturing of Brittle Substrates (HyMEMBs) vibration-assisted micromilling technology is used to produce holes from a few μm to up to 10 mm deep in a range of materials. The images show holes produced in silicone.
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Microbritt’s Hybrid MEchanical Micromanufacturing of Brittle Substrates (HyMEMBs) vibration-assisted micromilling technology is used to produce holes from a few μm to up to 10 mm deep in a range of materials. The images show holes produced in silicone.
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Microbritt’s Hybrid MEchanical Micromanufacturing of Brittle Substrates (HyMEMBs) vibration-assisted micromilling technology is used to produce holes from a few μm to up to 10 mm deep in a range of materials. The images show holes produced in silicone.
Microbritt is a micromanufacturing service start-up born out of the Precision Engineering Group at Newcastle University in the UK. The company is underpinned by its patented process for the micromilling of brittle materials. In the words of Dr Carl Dale, CEO at Microbritt: “The company is entirely driven to help companies with their manufacturing challenges and increase their rate of innovation.”
Microbritt provides much needed microfabrication services to UK customers, specifically those in industrial markets such as biomedical, defence, photonics and telecommunications, which require high-value, bespoke services. Products include microfluidic devices for biomedical, specialist security microscale devices for defence, optical guiding structures for photonics and atomic clocks for telecommunications. These applications usually require the use of advanced materials such as technical ceramics and single-crystal materials (e.g., silicon), owing to their superior physical, mechanical, optical or electronic properties. However, such smart functional materials are usually brittle (low-fracture toughness), anisotropic, and of high hardness. Defect-free micromilling of these materials is a challenging task, but Microbritt has the know-how to tackle it.
For micromilling, it is well known that there is a minimum uncut chip thickness (MCT), below which no cutting will take place. On the other hand, for brittle materials, there exists a critical uncut chip thickness (CCT), below which plastic deformation instead of brittle fracture will take place, i.e. in the case of ductile mode machining of brittle materials. Therefore, the milling parameters, which are related to the material, lubrication conditions and tool edge radius, are optimised using MCT and CCT.
Dr Dehong Huo, technical director at Microbritt, leads the Precision Engineering Group at Newcastle University, which has been performing cutting-edge research on micromilling brittle materials for many years. The group has assisted Microbritt in developing a patented vibration-assisted micromilling process known as Hybrid MEchanical Micromanufacturing of Brittle Substrates (HyMEMBs). Moreover, it has helped the company to develop optimal micromachining parameters for a range of brittle materials.
Microbritt uses HyMEMBs to perform high-quality subtractive microstructuring of hard and brittle materials. An additional benefit of this process is that it affords significantly shorter leadtimes than traditional microfabrication processes, which involve multiple steps and require tooling (photomasks).
Microbritt works closely with its customers to help them solve their manufacturing challenges to deliver state-of-the-art microscale products. The company’s commercial offerings include:
- Fabrication of customer-defined microscale products in a wide range of materials, namely metals, plastics, piezoelectric materials (e.g., lithium niobate) and ceramics. Customers mostly require silicon and glass in various sizes but wafers up to 8 in. can be handled in a wide range of materials.
- Complex die singulation, which allows for the creation of geometries that cannot be achieved using conventional techniques and is cheaper than stealth laser dicing.
- Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) post-processing, which involves creating complex features/holes in manufactured chips.
- Chip surgery, which involves accurately removing layers of processed chips with high precision to allow visual inspection for fault analysis.
- Microscale characterisation, which is performed using a suite of characterisation technologies including laser Doppler vibrometry (LDV), Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF SIMS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).
- Ancillary services, which include device packaging, metallisation and wirebonding, to name a few.
As a new company, Microbritt is still discovering the needs of its customers. However, current challenges solved by the company’s technology include:
- Microfluidic channels with complex shapes and gradients in a range of materials.
- High-precision holes/vias with a depth of 2 mm and beyond in silicon and glass.
- Suspended structures in silicon and lithium niobate in high-value applications, such as high-performance gyroscopes.
Microbritt’s HyMEMBs technology is used to produce high-aspect ratio holes. The image shows a through-silicon hole/through-silicon via (TSH/TSV) disc for housing an array of neuroprosthetic microneedles. The disc was machined from a 6 in. wafer. It had a diameter of 10 mm and a pitch of 1.25 mm. The holes had a diameter of 660 μm and a depth of 200 μm.
The future of UK manufacturing is high-value, bespoke production using highly automated systems to rapidly deliver at competitive prices. This has been accelerated by both the increasing need for custom devices at low and moderate volume, and global supply chain problems caused and exacerbated by a number of challenges including Brexit, COVID-19 and severe electronic component supply issues.
Microbritt is able to supply moulds to microfluidic suppliers or the final product to the end-user directly. Either way, this facilitates the rapid development of products for pharmaceutical and point-of-care (POC) diagnostic sensor companies. The global POC diagnostics market was valued at US$46.65 billion in 2021, and it is projected to grow from $36.37 billion in 2022 to $51.94 billion USD by 2029, with a CAGR of 5.2 percent1. However, this may increase considerably due to the pandemic and the accelerating need for rapid testing of infectious diseases.
Microbritt sits between materials providers (e.g., silicon wafers, metals manufacturers) and integrators (e.g., optical device manufacturers, defence researchers and many others). Significant value is added at this stage as the product moves from high-volume, low-margin materials provider to high-technology, high-value parts.
Microbritt aims to have a global reach by providing products through a rapid manufacturing service webportal, bringing the philosophy of customer-driven manufacturing services to the microscale domain. It will bridge the gap between rapid fabrication (low-volume, low-medium value products) with conventional microfabrication foundries (high-value products) and give customers access to a service to fabricate low-volume, high-value products. This will be highly beneficial for customers who require fast prototyping or high-value items, reducing leadtimes and costs to increase their rate of innovation.
Microbritt
Reference1Fortune Business Insights (2022). Point of care (POC) diagnostics market size, share and COVID-19 impact analysis, by product (blood glucose monitoring, infectious disease testing, cardiometabolic disease testing, pregnancy and fertility testing, hematology testing, and others), by sample (blood, nasal and oropharyngeal swabs, urine, and others), by end user (hospital bedside, physician’s office lab, urgent care and retail clinics, and homecare/self-testing), and regional forecast 2022-2029. [report]Available at: https://bit.ly/3cZbD9T