Local gallium implantation of silicon by a focused ion beam (FIB) has been used to create a mask for anisotropic tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) wet etching. The dependence of the etch stop properties of gallium-doped silicon on the implanted dose has been investigated and a dose of 4 x 10(13) ions cm(- 2) has been determined to be the threshold value for achieving observable etching resistance. Only a thin, approx. 50 nm, surface layer is found to be durable enough to serve as a mask with a high selectivity of at least 2000:1 between implanted and non-implanted areas. The combined FIB-TMAH process has been used to generate various types of 3D nanostructures including nanochannels separated by thin vertical sidewalls with aspect ratios up to 1:30, ultra-narrow (approx. 25 nm) freestanding bridges and cantilevers, and gratings with a resolution of 20 lines microm(- 1).

A cantilever-type silicon device for sensing changes in pressure has been designed, fabricated and characterized. The microfabrication process is based on two-sided etching of silicon-on insulator (SOI) wafers. The rectangular cantilevers are 9.5 µm thick, and cover an area of a few square millimeters. The cantilevers are surrounded by thick and tight frames, since on the three free sides there are only narrow, micrometer sized air gaps between the cantilever and the frame. This design and excellent mechanical properties of single crystal silicon enable sensitive detection of time-dependent gas pressure variations, i.e. acoustic waves. The mechanical properties of the cantilever have been characterized by analyzing its dynamic behavior. The resonance frequency and the mechanical vibrational mode patterns have been determined using finite-element method (FEM) simulations and laser interferometry. These results are found to be in good agreement with each other. Initially this mechanical door-like cantilever was designed to be used in ultra-high sensitivity photoacoustic gas sensing, but it can also be applied quite generally in various kinds of sound wave detection schemes.

We propose a nanofabrication method that allows for patterning on extremely corrugated surfaces with micrometer-size features. The technique employs focused ion beam nanopatterning of ion-sensitive inorganic resists formed by atomic layer deposition at low temperature. The nanoscale resolution on corrugated surfaces is ensured by inherently large depth of focus of a focused ion beam system and very uniform resist coating. The utilized TiO₂ and Al₂O₃ resists show high selectivity in deep reactive ion etching and enable the release of suspended nanostructures by dry etching. We demonstrate the great flexibility of the process by fabricating suspended nanostructures on flat surfaces, inclined walls, and on the bottom of deep grooves.

No abstract

In this paper, the influence of the atomic layer deposited alumina (Al 2 O 3) thin films on the dynamics of a high-Q mechanical silicon oscillator was experimentally studied. The resonance frequency and Q value of uncoated oscillators used in this work were about f 0 = 27 kHz and Q = 100 000 at p < 10 −2 mbar and T = 300 K. Deposited alumina film thicknesses varied from 5 to 662 nm. It is demonstrated that the resonance frequency of the mechanical oscillator increases with the film thickness because the added alumina films effectively stiffen the oscillator structure. In addition, it is shown that alumina thin films with thickness up to 100 nm can be deposited on microfabricated mechanical resonant structures without degrading the initially high quality (Q value) of the resonance. The resonance frequency of the silicon oscillator was less sensitive to the changes in ambient temperature with thicker alumina coatings. The reflectivity of silicon at 633 nm was reduced from R Si = 0.35 to R AR = 0.035 by coating the silicon oscillator with an alumina film whose thickness corresponds to the quarter of the optical wavelength serving as a single-layer anti-reflection coating.