Meniscus-confined electrodeposition of metallic microstructures with in-process monitoring of surface qualities

Abstract Meniscus-confined electrodeposition is a potential approach to fabricate three-dimensional (3D) metallic microstructures. However, the quality of the deposited microstructures by this approach, which is conventionally checked by a scanning electron microscope (SEM) used off-process, cannot be well in-process qualified. This paper presents a study on meniscus-confined electrodeposition of metallic microstructures with in-process monitoring of deposition qualities. Firstly, to understand the fabrication mechanism in meniscus-confined electrodeposition which formed the fundamental for quality control, mathematical model was derived to study the geometric shape of the meniscus. Multi-physical field simulation was carried out to investigate the effect of several process parameters on the deposition results, including the micropipette aperture, biased voltage and solution concentration, etc. Meniscus-confined electrodeposition of metallic micro-wires by utilizing a micropipette was carried out. The ionic current during the electrodeposition is in-process monitored for contact point detection and fabrication quality monitoring. The corresponding relationship between the quality of the fabricated micro-wires and the in-process monitored ionic currents was investigated. This study provides a potential way for in-process quality control with the local electrodeposition method.