Abstract
This paper presents a novel method to obtain structures with normative polygon cross section (PCS) shapes in a single crystal silicon substrate. A combination of wet etching and an after thermal oxidation (ATO) technique was used to fabricate several novel, complex structures with PCS shapes, which can hardly be fabricated by traditional wet etching. Based on such an innovative method, this paper proposes and develops three varieties of PCS silicon-beams. The subsequent experiment of fabricating silicon-beams with hexagonal sections has been taken as an example to validate the technique principle. Furthermore, the dimension parameters of the fabricated structures have been tested. Through this novel fabrication method, the sidewall arris of the fabricated silicon-beams can be maintained due to the protection of the ATO SiO2 layers, the arris disfigurement of the silicon-beam decreases dramatically and the quality of the silicon-beam is improved greatly.
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Abbreviations
- PCS:
-
Polygon cross section
- ATO:
-
After thermal oxidation
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, Grant No. 51175506 and 51005239), and carried out at the Microsystem Laboratory, College of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, National University of Defense Technology. Especially, the authors are grateful to Xu Zhang, Xiaoshuang Guo and Tongzhi Zhou for their help in device fabrication.
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Xiao, D., Wang, X., Zhou, Z. et al. A novel fabrication method based on an after thermal oxidation process for the realization of silicon-beams with normative polygon cross sections shapes. Microsyst Technol 19, 1081–1086 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-012-1704-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-012-1704-9