The fundamental aim of microengineering — to take a design from a computer aided design (CAD) software package and manifest it in a physical manner — may be achieved through one of a number of different fabrication or micromachining technologies. Many of these technologies employ a process known generally as photolithography , or a variation of this process, to transfer a two-dimensional pattern from a mask into the structural material. The mask is created from the data held by the CAD package, and the structure is built up by a series of steps that involve the deposition (addition of material to the structure) and etching (removing material from the.
