Improvement of thickness deposition uniformity in nickel electroforming for micro mold inserts

Thickness deposition is a crucial issue on the application of electroformed micro mold inserts. Edge concentration effect is the main source of the non-uniformity. The techniques of adopting a non-conducting shield, a secondary electrode and a movable cathode were explored to improve the thickness deposition uniformity during the nickel electroforming process. Regarding these techniques, a micro electroforming system with a movable cathode was particularly developed. The thickness variation of a 16 mm×16 mm electroformed sample decreased respectively from 150% to 35%, 12% and 18% by these three techniques. Combining these validated methods, anickelmold insert for microlens array was electroformed with satisfactory mechanical properties and high replication precision. It could be applied to the following injection molding process.

Computational Analysis of the Oscillatory Mixed Convection Flow along a Horizontal Circular Cylinder in Thermally Stratified Medium

The present work emphasizes the significance of oscillatory mixed convection stratified fluid and heat transfer characteristics at different stations of non-conducting horizontally circular cylinder in the presence of thermally stratified medium.To remove the difficulties in illustrating the coupled PDE’s,the finite-difference scheme with efficient primitive-variable formulation is proposed to transform dimensionless equations.The numerical simulations of coupled non-dimensional equations are computed in terms velocity of fluid,temperature and magnetic field which are computed to examine the fluctuating components of skin friction,heat transfer and current density for various emerging parameters.The governing parameters namely,thermally stratification parameter𝑆𝑆𝑡𝑡,mixed-convection parameter𝜆𝜆,Prandtl number Pr,magnetic force parameter𝜉𝜉and magnetic-Prandtl number𝛾𝛾are displayed graphically at selected values for velocity and heat transfer mechanism.It is computed that heat transfer attains maximum amplitude and good variations in the presence of thermally stratified parameter at each position𝛼𝛼=𝜋𝜋6⁄,𝛼𝛼=𝜋𝜋3⁄and𝛼𝛼=𝜋𝜋around the surface of non-conducting horizontally cylinder.The velocity of fluid attains certain height at station𝛼𝛼=𝜋𝜋6⁄for higher value of stratification parameter.It is also found that the temperature gradient decreases with stratification parameter𝑆𝑆𝑡𝑡,but it increases after a certain distance𝑌𝑌from the cylinder.The novelty of the current work is that due to non-conducting phenomena the magnetic effects are strongly observed far from the surface but exact at the surface are zero for each position.

Assembly of charged aerosols on non-conducting substrates via ion-assisted aerosol lithography （IAAL）

The development of ion-assisted aerosol lithography （IAAL） has enabled fabrication of complex three- dimensional nanoparticle （NP） structures on conducting substrates. In this work, the applicability of the IAAL technique was investigated on non-conducting substrates. The NP structure growth process on a non-conducting substrate was found to self-terminate and the structures subsequently repel incoming charged NPs and scatter them away. Electric field calculations supported the experimental findings and confirmed that the electric field distortions owing to charge build-up within the structures prevented additional NP deposition thereon. To regulate the charge build-up without compromising the number of NPs available for assembly, a corona discharger and an ion trap were implemented. By varying the number of ions available in the assembly process, an optimum level of ion injection was found that allowed for a prolonged （〉120 rain） assembly of NP structures on non-conducting substrates without the unwanted scattering of NPs.