Ford Motor Company Limited

Sickafus Nathan Edward

Shaun L McCarthy

A method of fabricating a planar micro-motor particularly well-suited to batch methods of microfabricating multiple planar stepper micro-motors from a single substrate wafer. Such micro-motors, having a planar stator supported by an electrically insulating substrate, a planar rotor body aligned over the stator, and a housing integral with the substrate and forming a rotor chamber therewith in which the rotor is rotatably captured, are formed by microfabricating the stator, rotor, and housing on the substrate with a boundary of release material encapsulating the rotor body. The release material is then removed to free the rotor body for rotation within the rotor chamber. Release materials, such as poly-alpha-methylstyrene, are suitable, being removable to free the rotor by heating to at least 180.degree. C. under vacuum. In the course of the sequential processing steps during the microfabrication, multiple layers of photo-responsive patterning material are used, some of which layers are removed in their entirety, while portions of at least some of the layers of photo-responsive patterning material remain in the micro-motor to at least partially form the housing or as part of the rotor body.

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Grosse Ile, MI, United States of America

Sickafus Nathan Edward