Anisotropic Etching of Silicon as a Tool for Creating Injection Molding Tooling Surfaces

To improve the fidelity of the microinjection molding process, research is underway to implement silicon inserts as tooling surfaces in an injection molding machine. These tooling surfaces are created using typical microfabrication processes, such as bonding and chemical etching. The primary focus of this paper is the evaluation of anisotropic wet etching of off-axis silicon wafers, including experimental results and simulations. A method is presented for the determination of the lang110rang direction and subsequent alignment of the mask with an accuracy of 0.01deg. The use of atomistic kinetic Monte Carlo simulations reveals the extreme importance of proper alignment between the mask features and the off-axis wafer. As an example application, the fabrication steps and corresponding simulations of a silicon insert for the manufacture of disposable plastic razors are presented