Characteristics of silicon substrates fabricated using nanogrinding and chemo-mechanical-grinding

In this paper, the silicon substrates machined by nanogrinding and chemo-mechanical-grinding (CMG) were characterized using atomic force microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and instrumented nanomechanical tests. It was found that the nanogrinding-generated silicon subsurfaces consisted of an amorphous layer and a damaged crystalline layer underneath, but the CMG-generated subsurface was defect-free. The formation of the amorphous and damaged crystalline layers was dependent on the maximum undeformed chip thickness involved in the nanogrinding process. Nanoindentation and nanoscratch tests revealed that the amorphous silicon exhibited to be more plastically deformed than the damaged crystalline layer under the same loading condition.