Monolithic Ni-electroplated microstructure and its application in micro mirrors and micro assembly

This paper presents micro mirrors and micro assembly mechanisms fabricated by monolithic nickel electroplating. Multiple nickel structural layers were electroplated and patterned with copper as the sacrificial material. A novel side latch design was proposed and demonstrated for 3D micro assembly of micro mirrors by simple push operation of micro probes. Micro mirrors was assembled in about 15 sec in laboratory tests. The resonance frequency of the scanning mode of a stand-alone micro mirror was measured to be 4.753 kHz with a quality factor of about 470.