Thermal de-isolation of silicon microstructures in a plasma etching environment

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical and experimental strategy for thermal de-isolation of silicon microstructures during a plasma etching process. Heat sinking blocks and thin metal layers are implemented around a thermally isolated mass to avoid severe spring width losses by a steep temperature rise. Thermal de-isolation significantly reduces the fabrication errors from −51.0% to −9.0% and from −39.5% to −6.7% for spring widths and resonant frequencies, respectively. Thermal de-isolation also reduces the standard deviation of resonant frequencies from 8.7% to 1.5% across a wafer, which clearly demonstrates the proposed method.