3D Printing Metals At the Microscale: Electroplating Pyrolyzed Carbon Mems

Here we report the first demonstration of electrodeposition of metals onto 3D printed carbon MEMS. Additive manufacturing approaches like two photon polymerization (2PP) enable complexity in three dimensions difficult by more traditional MEMS fabrication approaches, but making metal structures at the microscale using 3D printing is challenging. Through metals deposition on pyrolyzed 2PP structures, we show a greater than 50X decrease in the electrical resistance of printed carbon MEMS as well as a 4X increase in the maximum compressive load for devices.