Fabrication of Submicron Beams with Galvanic Etch Stop for Si in TMAH.docVIP

Sensors 2009, 9, 2470-2477; doi:10.3390/OPEN ACCESS sensors ISSN 1424-8220 /journal/sensors Article Fabrication of Submicron Beams with Galvanic Etch Stop for Si in TMAH Rong Lu 1,2, Yanhong Wu 1, Haitao Cheng 1,2, Heng Yang 1,*, Xinxin Li 1 and Yuelin Wang 1 1 State Key Laboratory of Transducer Technology , Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yishan Road 800, Shanghai, P.R. China. 2 Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, P.R. China. * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: h.yang@, Tel.: +86-21207; Fax: +86-21Received: 17 February 2009; in revised form: 15 March 2009 / Accepted: 2 April 2009 / Published: 9 April 2009 Abstract: A novel method has been developed to fabricate submicron beams with galvanic etch stop for Si in TMAH. The different Au:Si area ratios before and after the release of the beams are used to trigger the galvanic etch stop to fabricate submicron single crystal Si beams in standard Si wafers. Before the beams are released from the substrate, the Au electrodes are connected to the substrate electrically. The Au:Si area ratios are much smaller than the threshold value. TMAH etches the Si wafers. After the beams are fully released, they are mechanically supported by the Au wires, which also serve as the galvanic etch stop cathodes. The Au:Si area ratios are much larger than the threshold value. The beams are protected by galvanic etch stop. The thicknesses of the beams are determined by shallow dry etching before TMAH etching. A 530 nm thick beam was fabricated in standard (111) wafers. Experiments showed that the beam thicknesses did not change with over etching, even if the SiO2 layers on the surface of the beams were stripped. Keywords: Galvanic etch stop; nano beam; TMAH.  Sensors 2009, 9 2471 1. Introduction Submicron/nano