213 Hot Melt Ink Printing with Focus on Customized Protective Layers for Metal and Silicon Structuring and Sacrificial Molds for Die Fabrication

The purpose of this work is the development of a novel hot melt ink print system, which provides a fast and customerfocused fabrication process for protective layers and sacrificial molds. The used hot melt ink is impermeable to water or other liquids and opaque against light, it can act out as a protective layer against subtractive surface structuring processes or thin and thick film deposition processes. Owing to the forming properties of the used hot melt ink the printing of 3-dimensional objects with an aspect ratio up to 115 was realized. The objects were used as sacrificial molds in combination with an electroplating process for fabrication of solid parts.

A salient advantage of the used hot melt ink is the wide compatibility with many conventionally used chemical solutions and fabrication processes. The fields of application are the printed circuit board production, silicon surface structuring, 3- dimensional surface modification or the mold and die production. With the assistance of the print process a direct conversion process from software data out of a design system into printed layers or molds is realized. With this technology there is no need of lithography steps, photosensitive resists or photo masks. Owning to the characteristics of the printing technology innovative process chains and one-piece-flow fabrication processes were realized