Applying Foil Queue Microelectrode with Tapered Structure in Micro-EDM to Eliminate the Step Effect on the 3D Microstructure’s Surface

When using foil queue microelectrodes (FQ-microelectrodes) for micro electrical discharge machining (micro-EDM), the processed results of each foil microelectrode (F-microelectrode) can be stacked to construct three-dimensional (3D) microstructures. However, the surface of the 3D microstructure obtained from this process will have a step effect, which has an adverse effect on the surface quality and shape accuracy of the 3D microstructures. To focus on this problem, this paper proposes to use FQ-microelectrodes with tapered structures for micro-EDM, thereby eliminating the step effect on the 3D microstructure’s surface. By using a low-speed wire EDM machine, a copper foil with thickness of 300 μm was processed to obtain a FQ-microelectrode in which each of the F-microelectrodes has a tapered structure along its thickness direction. These tapered structures could effectively improve the construction precision of the 3D microstructure and effectively eliminate the step effect. In this paper, the effects of the taper angle and the number of microelectrodes on the step effect were investigated. The experimental results show that the step effect on the 3D microstructure’s surface became less evident with the taper angle and the number of F-microelectrodes increased. Finally, under the processing voltage of 120 V, pulse width of 1 μs and pulse interval of 10 μs, a FQ-microelectrode (including 40 F-microelectrodes) with 10° taper angle was used for micro-EDM. The obtained 3D microstructure has good surface quality and the step effect was essentially eliminated.

Tapered fiber sensor in the near infrared wavelength

Simulated transmission spectra for tapered fibers with no taper, one taper and two tapers in the near infrared wavelength range, calculated by Finite-Difference-Time-Domain method are currently presented. Transmission peak positions tend to shift to the shorter wavelength when the taper deformation is added to the fiber or the taper width gets narrower. The thickness sensitivity for the tapered structures with different taper thicknesses is about 2.28e-3 nm·µm−1. There is an interference structure in the electric field distribution images, which reveals in the fiber structures. The transmission spectra for the fiber without taper, one taper and two-tapered structures were simulated in near infrared wavelength by FDTD. The transmission spectra for tlated in near infrared wavelength by FDTD. The sensitivity of the fiber was about 50 nm × RIU−1 and it had better refractive index detection. The tapered fiber can be applied to the bio-chemical sensors and physical deformation testing.