Nowadays, products and systems tend to be miniaturized, which means that the structural and functional parts in complex systems will become smaller and smaller.

This requires not only the use of advanced materials with appropriate physical properties, but also the miniaturization of geometric features in order to increase the number of integrated functions.

Therefore, it is necessary to develop and manufacture micro parts. Micro-structural parts manufactured by mu-MIM can be used instead of plastic parts to obtain the advantages of mechanical properties, corrosion resistance or high temperature properties of metal materials.

LIGA technology (the combination of lithography and electroforming) is usually only suitable for 2D geometry, and the material selection is limited by electroforming. Other technologies, such as electrochemical micro-fabrication, micro-milling and micro-grinding, all come from the silicon-based micro-electronics industry. They all have the ability to solve problems as small as 1 micron, but they are not suitable for mass production of 3D parts.

Nowadays, the size of micro-parts produced by micron-MIM can reach 5 microns. However, in order to optimize performance, such as keeping shape according to flowability or parts, special injection materials of submicron or nanometer size, which are fully possible for use in mu-MIM, have been developed.

Generally speaking, MIM can reproduce about 10 times the average particle size for micro parts, which is particularly suitable for micro parts. If smaller features are to be manufactured, smaller powders are needed. Now the available metal powder is 1 micron. Some powders are too active to reach the size range(e.g., Ti), while other metal powders are easier to produce (e.g., stainless steel) by special aerosol spraying.

If the powder size range is less than 1um, special injection materials should be used to adapt to the problems caused by injection moulding and degreasing in large surface area.

At present, the mu-MIM is still in the cultivation stage, and generally develops in parallel with the 2C-MIM process. First of all, both processes are now being used in production, but both are still in researching. On the way to successful market, the preliminary competitive research and development objectives are all key work.