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The Formation Mechanism of Nondefective Silicon Micropatterns Fabricated by Scratching Assisted Electrochemical Etching

MetadataDetails
Publication Date2019-01-01
JournalECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology
AuthorsYong Peng, Shulan Jiang, Yong Tan, Hongbo Wang, Lei Wu
InstitutionsSouthwest Jiaotong University
Citations7

Fabrication of nondefective silicon microstructures at specific region is of great importance but challenging, which is promising to boost the performance of microsensors, micro energy storage devices, and microfluidic devices. A low-cost approach to fabricate nondefective silicon microstructures based on scratching assisted electrochemical etching has been proposed. Shallow patterns together with silicon amorphous and defects layer were scratched by the diamond tip. The scratched area was utilized as sacrificial layer in the electrochemical etching process and removed rapidly. The introduction of electrochemical etching would change the distribution of holes in the groove area and substrate, thus the formation and morphology of the nondefective silicon structures are different. The influences of etching voltage, scratching load, etching duration, resistivity and crystal orientation of substrates on the silicon microstructures were discussed systematically. The depth, width and cross section shape of the silicon microstructures change with etching duration, voltage polarity and resistivity. But the crystal orientation has little effect on the width and depth of silicon microstructures. Nondefective silicon microstructures array with different pitch and height can be fabricated in specific location by the scratch assisted electrochemical etching approach, which can be used in high performance micro devices.