Experimental Study on the Footing Effect for SOG Structures Using DRIE

This paper experimentally studies the effects of the conductivity of a silicon wafer and the gap height between silicon structures and glass substrate on the footing effect for silicon on glass （SOG） structures in the deep reactive ion etching （DRIE） process. Experiments with gap heights of 5,20, and 50μm were carried out for performance comparison of the footing effect. Also,two kinds of silicon wafers with resistivity of 2-4 and 0.01-0. 0312Ω· cm were used for the exploration. The results show that structures with resistivity of 0.01 - 0. 0312Ω· cm have better topography than those with resistivity of 2-4Ω· cm; and structures with 50μm-high gaps between silicon structures and glass substrate suffer some- what less of a footing effect than those with 20μm-high gaps,and much less than those with Stem-high gaps. Our theoretical analysis indicates that either the higher conductivity of the silicon wafer or a larger gap height between silicon structures and glass substrate can suppress footing effects. The results can contribute to the choice of silicon type and optimum design for many microsensors.

A new DRIE cut-off material in SOG MEMS process

The silicon on glasses process is a common preparation method of micro-electro-mechanical system inertial devices,which can realize the processing of thick silicon structures.This paper proposes that indium tin oxides(ITO)film can serve as a deep silicon etching cut-off layer because ITO is less damaged under the attack of fluoride ions.ITO has good electrical conductivity and can absorb fluoride ions for silicon etching and reduce the reflection of fluoride ions,thus reducing the foot effect.The removal and release of ITO use an acidic solution,which does not damage the silicon structure.Therefore,the selection of the sacrificial layer has an excellent effect in maintaining the shape of the MEMS structure.This method is used in the preparation of MEMS accelerometers with a structure thickness of 100μm and a feature size of 4μm.The over-etching of the bottom of the silicon structure caused by the foot effect is negligible.The difference between the simulated value and the designed value of the device characteristic frequency is less than 5%.This indicates that ITO is an excellent deep silicon etch stopper material.

A single-mask dry-release process for fabrication of high aspect ratio SOI MEMS devices

A single-mask dry-release process for fabrication of high aspect ratio SOI MEMS devices is presented,which takes advantage of the lag effect in silicon DRIE(deep reactive ion etching).The wide trenches and the releasing holes are etched to the buried oxide in the first-step DRIE whereas the narrow trenches are still connected due to the lag effect.After the buried oxide is removed by wet etching through the opened releasing holes and wide trenches,the narrow trenches are etched through by the second-step DRIE.Not only can the sticking problems be avoided,but also the footing effect during the DRIE can be partially suppressed.The feasibility of the proposed technique was verified by implementing a capacitive accelerometer.The scale factor and the non-linearity of the fabricated accelerometer were measured to be 63.4 mV/g and 0.1% with the measurement range of ±1 g,respectively.