Fabrication of silicon oxycarbide-based microcomponents via photolithographic and soft lithography approaches

This work presents the fabrication of SiOC ceramic microparts starting from a commercially available preceramic polysiloxane. Two different micro structuring techniques were applied, e.g. photolithography and soft-lithography. For both processes, photo-crosslinking of the preceramic polymer was performed. Subsequently, the green microparts were pyrolysed under argon at temperatures between 1000 and 1400 °C to yield ceramic SiOC microcomponents. In this way, ceramic microstructures on Si wafers (with dimensions down to 20 μm) have been obtained by photolithographic techniques; free-standing and complex shaped ceramic microcomponents (aspect ratios up to 3:1) were also produced using soft lithography techniques, i.e. replica molding (RM) followed by micro transfer molding (μTM).