Indentation modulus and hardness investigation of crystalline silicon surfaces treated by inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching

Abstract

In this paper we present an investigation of the influence of different roughness of etched silicon surfaces on the measured nanomechanical properties. For the etching, inductively coupled plasma (ICP) reactive ion etching (RIE) was performed on the surface of silicon samples with different crystal orientations (i.e., Si <100>, Si <110>, and Si <111>). Different roughness levels were obtained on each sample by changing the bias voltage through the high-frequency (HF) power. The surface roughness was measured using atomic force microscopy (AFM). The obtained surface roughness for the same etching conditions was different for different crystal orientations. The nanomechanical properties were measured using nanoindentation.