Fabrication of Micro Diamond-Like Carbon-Nozzles by Plasma Oxidation Printing

The plasma oxidation printing (POP) was proposed as a digital manufacturing to shape the diamond-like carbon (DLC) thick film into a micronozzle on the tool steel substrate. Its head shape was first designed by computer-aided design (CAD) and printed onto DLC film by the maskless lithography. The unprinted DLC was removed in depth by the anisotropic etching. Fine circular nozzle with the inner diameter of 10 μm and the height of 10 μm was fabricated during the duration time of 3.6 ks. Different from the micromilling or the micro-electric discharging, the micronozzle geometry is directly fabricated from its CAD data. The micronozzle with the cross-star outlet was constructed without the change of processing procedure and without use of tooling.