Thin-film crystal-structure-processed mechanical devices, and methods and systems for making

#The present invention arises from a new area of recognition and development focussed on the technology of low-temperature, crystalline-structure-processed devices, and in particular mechanical, mechanical and electrical, so-called MEMS (micro-electromechanical), layered and stacked devices, and devices organized into monolithic arrays in layers, that opens up a broad new field of potential devices and applications not heretofore so inexpensively and conveniently made practical and practicable. This new field of possible devices, from which a number of inventions, one of which is specifically addressed in this disclosure, springs effectively from the recognition that internal crystalline-structure processing performed within the bodies of a wide variety of different materials, is capable of enabling fabrication of small (perhaps even down to devices formed from small molecular clusters), versatile, widely controllable and producible, accurate, mechanical, electromechanical and MEMS devices that can be formed very inexpensively, and, with respect to laser processing, in uncontrolled and room-temperature environments not requiring vacuum chambers, etc.

#Especially, the invention offers significant opportunities for the building, relatively cheaply and very reliable, of very tiny mechanical devices that can be deployed in dense two-dimensional and three-dimensional complex arrays and stacked arrangements. These devices can take on a large range of different configurations, such as individuated, single-device configurations, monolithic single-layer array arrangements of like devices, similar monolithic arrays of combined electrical and mechanical devices, and in vertically integrated and assembled stacks and layers of complex devices, simply not achievable through conventional prior art processes and techniques. By enabling room-temperature fabrication, otherwise easily damaged and destroyed layer-supporting substrates, including fabricated-device under-layers, can readily be employed.

#The field of discovery and recognition which underpins the invention disclosed herein, can be practiced with a very wide range of materials, such as non-semiconductor and semiconductor materials, piezoelectric materials, dielectric materials, in arrays that can be deployed on rigid substrates of various characters, and on a wide range of flexible materials, such as traditional flex-circuit materials (polymers and plastics), metallic foil materials, and even fabric materials. Additionally, the field of development from which the present invention emerges can be employed with large-dimension bulk materials, as well as with various thin-film materials. With regard to the latter category of materials, the process of this invention can take advantage of traditional thin-film processing techniques to shape and organize unique devices, which are otherwise prepared in accordance with the internal crystalline-structure-processing proposed by the present invention, thus to achieve and offer mechanical properties in a broad arena of new opportunities.

#With this in mind, the significant improvements and special contributions made to the art of device-fabrication according to the invention will become more fully apparent as the invention description which now follows is read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

#FIG. 1 is a block/schematic view illustrating a system which implements the methodology of this invention for the creation of single or arrayed mechanical devices in accordance with the present invention.

#FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram illustrating single-side, full-depth internal-crystalline-structure laser processing to create a mechanical device in accordance with the invention.

#In FIGS. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12 and 13, the darkened regions in the material being processed represents the processed regions in these materials.

#Turning now to the drawings, and referring first of all to FIG. 1, illustrated generally at 20 is a system which is employed according to the present invention to implement a methodology for processing the internal crystalline structure of various different thin-film materials in accordance with the invention, and all for the purpose of creating one or more thin-film mechanical devices that are intended to perform respective, predetermined, pre-chosen tasks. Included in system 20 are a block 22 which represents a suitably programmed digital computer, a block 24 which is operatively connected to block 22, and which represents the presence of appropriate laser structure and controls, such as beam-shaping and optics controls using optical or masking methods, fluency controls, angularity controls, and other, for defining the functional characteristics of a appropriate laser beam shown at 26 which is to be employed in accordance with the invention to produce internal crystalline-structure processing of any one of a number of thin-film different materials, as will be more fully mentioned below. In FIG. 1, a material for processing is shown generally at 28, with this material having a layer form, and being suitably supported on an appropriate supporting substrate 30 which rests upon, and is anchored to, a three-axis translation table (a driven table) 32.

#Table 32 is drivingly connected to a motion drive system, represented by block 34 in FIG. 1, which drive system is under the control of computer 22. This motion drive system, under the control and influence of computer 22, is capable of translating table 32, and thus material supported on this table, in each of the three usual orthogonal axes known as the X, Y, and Z axes, such axes being pictured at the right side of FIG. 1. Very specifically, control over motion of table 32 is directed by an appropriate algorithm 36 which is resident within computer 22, and which, fundamentally, is equipped to direct a laser beam for processing in accordance with device configuration and device internal mechanical properties that have been chosen and selected, and for which algorithm 36 is especially designed.