Smoothing of microfabricated silicon features by thermal annealing in reducing or inert atmospheres

Kai Kolari (Corresponding Author), Tapani Vehmas, Olli Svensk, Pekka Törmä, Timo Aalto

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticle in a proceedings journalScientificpeer-review

    Abstract

    Reordering of silicon surface as a result of annealing in reducing or inert environment at high temperature has gained interest recently. Annealing in pure hydrogen and preferably in reduced pressure has been studied for more than a decade to reduce the surface roughness that originates from wet or deep reactive ion etching (DRIE). The study has widened into high-throughput engineering involving now also argon atmosphere. In contrast to hydrogen, the rearrangement of atoms starts abruptly and requires absence of oxygen and nitrogen. The potential applications of silicon surface annealing include mirror surfaces and low-loss waveguides in integrated optics, electrical vias through silicon wafers, and various microsystems, such as membranes, filters, microresonators and microfluidic structures.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number014017
    JournalPhysica Scripta
    Volume2010
    Issue numberT141
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2009
    MoE publication typeA4 Article in a conference publication
    Event23rd Nordic Semiconductor Meeting, NSM 2009 - Reykjavik, Iceland
    Duration: 14 Jun 200917 Jun 2009

    Keywords

    • Smoothing
    • silicon
    • argon
    • surface diffusion

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