A quantitative model capturing pattern dependent effects and time evolution of the etch rate in Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) is presented. DRIE is a key process for pattern formation in semiconductor fabrication. Non-uniformities are caused due to microloading and aspect ratio dependencies. The etch rate varies over time and lateral etch consumes some of the etching species. This thesis con...

Large-area, vertically aligned silicon nanowires with a uniform diameter along the height direction were fabricated by combining in situ-formed anodic aluminum oxide template and metal-assisted chemical etching. The etching rate of the Si catalyzed using a thick Au mesh is much faster than that catalyzed using a thin one, which is suggested to be induced by the charge transport process. The thi...

Many potential applications of porous silicon nanowires (SiNWs) fabricated with metal-assisted chemical etching are highly dependent on the precise control of morphology for device optimization. However, the effects of key etching parameters, such as the amount of deposited metal catalyst, HF-oxidant molar ratio (χ), and solvent concentration, on the morphology and etching kinetics of the SiNWs...

Time-resolved extinction spectroscopy is employed to study the reaction kinetics in the shape-conversion reaction involving halide ions (including Cl(-), Br(-) and I(-)) etching (sculpturing) silver nanoplates. A series of time-resolved extinction spectra are obtained during the in situ etching process and the evolution of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) of the silver nanoparticles is analyzed....

We report the nonselective plasma etching of epitaxial GaN:Mg, Al0.63Ga0.37N, and AlN/Al0.08Ga0.92N short-period superlattices with various doping properties. Etching is performed using mixed CF4/Ar feed gases in a combined inductively coupled plasma and reactive-ion etching chamber. A uniform etch rate of ,23 nm/min is obtained for each of the compositions studied under identical conditions. T...

Atomistic simulations of anisotropic wet chemical etching of crystalline silicon have been performed in order to determine the dependence of the etch rates of different crystallographic orientations on surface coverage and clustering of OH radicals. We show that the etch rate is a non-monotonic function of OH coverage and that there always exists a coverage value at which the etch rate reaches ...

Metal-assisted chemical etching of silicon is an electroless method that can produce porous silicon by immersing metal-modified silicon in a hydrofluoric acid solution without electrical bias. We have been studying the metal-assisted hydrofluoric acid etching of silicon using dissolved oxygen as an oxidizing agent. Three major factors control the etching reaction and the porous silicon structur...

PDMS films of 10 μm thickness can be patterned within 30 min by combining dry etching to achieve substantially vertical sidewalls with wet etching to achieve high etch rates and to protect the underlying substrate from attack. Dry etching alone would have taken 5 h, and wet etching alone would produce severe undercutting. In addition, using either technique alone produces undesirable surface mo...

Periodic high aspect ratio GaAs nanopillars with widths in the range of 500-1000 nm are produced by metal-assisted chemical etching (MacEtch) using n-type (100) GaAs substrates and Au catalyst films patterned with soft lithography. Depending on the etchant concentration and etching temperature, GaAs nanowires with either vertical or undulating sidewalls are formed with an etch rate of 1-2 μm/mi...

In this work, we introduce a maskless, resist-free rapid prototyping method to fabricate three-dimensional structures using electron beam induced deposition (EBID) of amorphous carbon (aC) from a residual hydrocarbon precursor in combination with metal-assisted chemical etching (MaCE) of silicon. We demonstrate that EBID-made patterned aC coating, with thickness of even a few nanometers, acts a...