Focused ion beam micromilling and articles therefrom

• US 5,773,116 A
• Filed: 08/01/1996
• Issued: 06/30/1998
• Est. Priority Date: 08/01/1996
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Los Alamos National Security LLC (Government of the United States of America)
• Original Assignee: Regents of the University of California (University of California)
• Inventors: Lamartine, Bruce C., Stutz, Roger A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Krynski, William
• Assistant Examiner(s): MULVANEY, ELIZABETH EVANS
• Application Number:
  US08/695,326
• Time in Patent Office: 698 Days
• Field of Search: 428/64.1, 428/64.2, 428/64.4, 428/457, 428/913, 369/283, 369/288
• US Class Current: 428/64.1
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 5/73917 Metallic substrates, i.e. elemental metal or metal alloy substrates
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 5/8404 manufacturing base layers
• CPC Class Codes: H01J 2237/3174 Etching microareas
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 428/913 Material designed to be responsive to temperature, light, moisture
• CPC Class Codes: Y10T 428/21 Circular sheet or circular blank
• CPC Class Codes: Y10T 428/31678 Of metal

Abstract

An ultrahigh vacuum focused ion beam micromilling apparatus and process areisclosed. Additionally, a durable data storage medium using the micromilling process is disclosed, the durable data storage medium capable of storing, e.g., digital or alphanumeric characters as well as graphical shapes or characters.

Claims

1. A durable data storage medium comprising a substrate having milled characters therein, said milled characters having an aspect ratio of depth to width of from about 1 to about 50, wherein said milled characters are characters selected from the group consisting of digital characters, alphanumeric characters, glyphical characters and graphical characters.

9. The durable storage medium of claim 1 wherein said milling represents data stored as pixels of variable depth and aspect ratio, said data recoverable as images selected from the group consisting of halftone images, greyscale images and color images.

2. A durable data storage medium comprising a substrate having milled characters therein, said milled characters having an aspect ratio of depth to width of from about 1 to about 50, wherein said substrate is of a material selected from the group consisting of iridium, tantalum, tungsten, molybdenum, niobium, titanium, vanadium, chromium, manganese, iron, copper, nickel, cobalt, silicon, gold, scandium, and pulsed-gas aluminum.

3. A durable data storage medium comprising a substrate having milled characters therein, said milled characters having an aspect ratio of depth to width of from about 1 to about 50, wherein said milled characters occupy about one square micron each.

4. A durable data storage medium comprising a substrate having milled characters therein, said milled characters having an aspect ratio of depth to width of from about 1 to about 50, wherein said milled characters are digital characters which occupy a space with a minimum diameter of about 150 nanometers each.

5. A durable data storage medium comprising a substrate having milled characters therein, said milled characters having an aspect ratio of depth to width of from about 1 to about 50, wherein said milled characters are each singular depressions.

6. The durable data storage medium of claim 5 wherein said milled characters are filled with an overcoat material to a level sufficient to form an essentially smooth surface containing no distinguishable milled characters.

7. The durable data storage medium of claim 5 wherein at least a portion of said milled characters are filled with an overcoat material to a level sufficient to form an essentially smooth surface on said substrate whereby said at least a portion of said milled characters are undistinguishable as characters.

8. The durable data storage medium of claim 6 wherein at least a portion of said milled characters filled with an overcoat material have said overcoat material removed such that said milled character is distinguishable as a character.