The Smallest Pinball Table

The Smallest Pinball Table

A micro pinball table has been developed by scientists in Sweden who used the table to demonstrate the novel technique they have developed for making micromachines. Martin Bring and colleagues at the Chalmers University of Technology and the Institute of Microelectronics in Gothenburg believe that their process overcomes many of the problems associated with the 'dry etching' step that is conventionally used to fabricate silicon based microelectromechanical devices, and say that it could provide an easy and robust alternative to existing methods.

Bring and colleagues built a micro pinball table in which silicon cantilevers acted as the 'flippers', magnetic beads 150 microns in diameter were the balls, and the table measured 25 millimetres square. They started with two 700-micron thick wafers of single crystal silicon and used a combination of oxidation, patterning and dry etching - with an additional oxygen plasma bonding step - to make the device. The patterning involves only one step - compared with several steps for traditional methods. Moreover, the plasma bonding takes place at room temperature, which means that a wider choice of materials can be used to make the devices. The high temperatures involved in current fabrication techniques limit the materials that can be processed.

The researchers put in the balls 'by hand' and tilted the table at an angle of 20 degrees to the horizontal. They found that the speed of a ball could reach up to 0.75 kilometres per hour - or 210 000 microns per second. This is equivalent to a football having an almost supersonic speed of 1125 km per hour. "The pinball games are used for demonstrating this simple and easy process," Brings said.

SOURCE: PhysicsWeb.