Anisotropic wet etching is a most widely employed for the fabrication of MEMS/NEMS structures using silicon bulk micromachining. The use of Si{110} in MEMS is inevitable when a microstructure with vertical sidewall is to be fabricated using wet anisotropic etching. In most commonly employed etchants (i.e. TMAH and KOH), potassium hydroxide (KOH) exhibits higher etch rate and provides improved a...

The single conical nanochannel investigated here was produced in polymer films using the ion track-etching technique. [S1] Before the chemical etching process, the samples of PET were exposed to the UV light for 1 h from each side. To produce a conical nanochannel, etching was performed only from one side, the other side of the cell contains a solution that is able to neutralize the etchant as ...

Reactive ion etching is a widely-used technique for fabricating via holes in polymer-metal multilayer interconnect structures. Reactive ion etching of thin film polymers was studied using Benzocyclobutene polymer and photoresist etch mask, in O2 and SF6 plasma. A design of experiments (DOE) was carried out with rf power, pressure, and SF6 concentration as the design variables, with a constant t...

We demonstrate a maskless photochemical etching method that is capable of performing one-step etching of multi-level structures. This method uses a digital projector to focus an image onto the sample and define the etching pattern. By combining digital projection photochemical etching with diffraction phase microscopy, etch heights can be measured in situ in a non-destructive manner. This metho...

Using a combination of low-pressure oxygen and high temperatures, isotropic and anisotropic silicon (Si) etch rates can be controlled up to ten micron per minute. By varying the process conditions, we show that the vertical-to-lateral etch rate ratio can be controlled from 1:1 isotropic etch to 1.8:1 anisotropic. This simple Si etching technique combines the main respective advantages of both w...

Friction-induced selective etching provides a convenient and practical way for fabricating protrusive nanostructures. A further understanding of this method is very important for establishing a controllable nanofabrication process. In this study, the effect of etching temperature on the formation of protrusive hillocks and surface properties of the etched silicon surface was investigated. It is...

Ge, B, P-doped silica glass films are widely used as optical waveguides because of their low losses and inherent compatibility with silica optical fibers. These films were etched by ICP !inductively coupled plasma" with chrome etch masks, which were patterned by reactive ion etching !RIE" using chlorine-based gases. In some cases, the etched surfaces of silica glass were very rough !root-mean s...