Screening of spherical moulds manufactured isotropically in plasma etching conditions

Abstract

Micro-moulding is a critical rapid prototyping process chain used for a wide range of applications. This study demonstrates that it is possible to manufacture mould at low excitation frequency plasma (380 kHz), on a silicon substrate using fluorinated chemistry. According to the mask aperture designed and process time, the cavities profile characteristics, depending on the plasma chemistry, were analysed to predict the degree of anisotropy and the curvature. We show the possibility of creating curvature shapes with a desirable conic constant k of 1.25. In particular, we highlighted the smallest aperture sizes are more attractive for replicating optical micro-lens arrays using silicon moulds. Otherwise, the largest aperture sizes gain more attention for optoelectronics, microsystems, and microfluidics applications.

Improvement on the uniformity of deep reactive ion etch for electrically isolated silicon-based substrates

“…One effective way to improve DRIE etch uniformity is to optimize etching parameters by providing a uniform plasma. Herth et al [13][14][15][16] investigated etching parameters to obtain highly uniform large-scale MEMS and micro-opto-electro-mechanical system (e.g. resonant mirrors) with ICP-DRIE.…”