Alkaline Etching of Silicon - microtechprocess（碱性蚀刻硅microtechprocess）.pdf

Alkaline Etching of Silicon Introduction Alkaline etching of crystalline using KOH (potassium hydroxide), TMAH (tetramethyl ammonium hydroxide), or EDP (ethylenediamene pyrocatecol) is performed for creating various feature definition in MEMS (micro electrical mechanical structures, solar cells, and integrated circuit manufacturing. KOH will be discussed in this section. The alkaline chemistries have the ability to preferentially etch silicon along the crystal orientation. This makes it possible to create geometries difficult to produce with other micromachining techniques (for example V-grooves). The etching rate is dependent on the orientation of the silicons crystal planes, orientations of 100 and 110 etch differently than 111 due to the arrangement of atoms at these orientations. Silicon 100 etches anisotropically along the 111 crystal plane, with a 54.74° angle from the 100 plane. Silicon 100 that is masked etches as shown in Figure 1. A. Etch Mask 54.74° Silicon 100 B. Facet Etch Figure 1. Silicon 100 etching using KOH. The crystal facet etches at an angle of 54.74º © MT Systems 2007 Page 1 Update 06/08/07 Process Technology KOH solutions are prepared by dissolving KOH pellets in deionized ultra pure wafer (DI H O). Various 2 concentrations for the etching solutions are proposed and additives are sometimes used to decr