Title: Modelling and simulations of DRIE including a footing effect

Authors: Jian Zhang, Qing-An Huang, Wei-Hua Li

Addresses: Key Laboratory of MEMS of Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, PR China. ' Key Laboratory of MEMS of Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, PR China. ' Key Laboratory of MEMS of Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, PR China

Abstract: An improved model for surface evolvement of Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) is developed, which is based on Time Multiplexed Deep Etching (TMDE). It couples the advanced plasma sheath approximation and has the simplex data structure due to 2D string algorithm, so as to achieve an acceptable arithmetic speed. Furthermore, after some reasonable descriptions for footing surface are assumed, a simple module for footing effect simulations is added to this model. The simulations of DRIE and footing effect are also performed, and the simulated results are in accordance with the experiments.

Keywords: DRIE; deep reactive ion etching; surface evolvement; footing effect; simulation; time multiplexed deep etching; plasma sheath approximation; modelling; MEMS; microelectromechanical systems.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCMSSE.2009.027488

International Journal of Computational Materials Science and Surface Engineering, 2009 Vol.2 No.3/4, pp.302 - 311

Published online: 28 Jul 2009 *

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