Structuring of green sheets and laminates for multilayer ceramic microsystems with a combined laser and punching machine

Multilayer ceramics technology, such as Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramic (LTCC), offers distinctive advantages for the realization of miniaturized three-dimensional structures. Further, the chemical inertness and mechanical stability of the ceramic material, combined with the possibility to realize electrical, mechanical and fluidic functions within the same technology, make it ideally suited for the fabrication of microsystems. The respective structuring of green sheets and laminates is done by either mechanical punching or laser machining of the material. In this paper a novel combined laser and punching machine is introduced, which allows both punching of ultrafine via holes and that of coarser structures, as well as very flexible laser cutting and ablation on substrate sizes up to 10 inch. The intention in developing this machine was to offer great flexibility for various structuring tasks and at the same time allowing an effective production of small and medium series of microsystem products. Due to the fact, that this combined laser and punching machine is currently being built up, microsystem products that were actually processed on it, cannot be presented. But two types of microsystems, pressure sensors and micro fuel cells, for which this is intended, will briefly be covered. The aim of the paper is further to present the machine concept and to discuss some of its aspects.