A simplified test vehicle for understanding and improving tilt and its impact on the performance of inertial sensors

Author

Varvara, M. ; Barnett, R. ; Avril, F. ; Bennett, P.

Author_Institution

SPTS Technol., Newport, UK

fYear

2015

fDate

21-25 June 2015

Firstpage

1172

Lastpage

1174

Abstract

This paper reports a simplified methodology to control and increase the verticality of silicon etched structures in a DRIE source. The combined analysis of polymer etching on blanket wafers and tilt of inertial sensors enables us to validate the optimized design and to identify the key parameters of the Bosch DRIE process. This resulted in a significant improvement in the symmetry of the large area plasma source and a reduction in the non-uniformity of the ion density above the wafer from few 10s of % on conventional ICPs to ±1.5%. The improvement in polymer removal correlates directly with etch tilt. This allows for a greatly simplified test/validation vehicle.

Keywords

elemental semiconductors; etching; polymers; sensors; silicon; sputter etching; Bosch DRIE source process; ICP; Si; blanket wafer; deep reactive ion etching; inertial sensor; large area plasma source symmetry; nonuniformity ion density; polymer etching; silicon etched structure; vehicle testing; Etching; Plasma density; Polymers; Sensors; Silicon; Bosch process; Deep reactive ion etching (DRIE); inertial sensor; silicon etching; tilt reduction;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems (TRANSDUCERS), 2015 Transducers - 2015 18th International Conference on

Conference_Location

Anchorage, AK

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/TRANSDUCERS.2015.7181137

Filename

7181137