Characterization of sidewall roughness for silicon microstructures in micro actuator

Issue title: Selected Papers from the 14th International Symposium on Applied Electromagnetics and Mechanics (ISEM 2009), Part II

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Han, Guoqiang^{a; *} | Jiang, Zhuangde^{a; b} | Jing, Weixuan^a | Gao, Jianzhong^a | Prewett, Philip D.^b | Jiang, Kyle^b

Affiliations: [a] State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710049, China | [b] School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 29 82668616; Fax: +86 29 82668612; E-mail: galehan@gmail.com

Abstract: Thermal micro actuators are fabricated using deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) technique on silicon on insulator (SOI) substrates. The sidewalls of silicon microstructure in micro actuator are used as optical interfaces with the fibers. Line edge roughness (LER) of reflective sidewalls is essential to device performance. A method is presented through analyzing high-resolution top-down scanning electron microscope (SEM) images to characterize sidewall line edge roughness (LER) of Si microstructures in thermal micro actuator, only conventional SEM scanning technique is required.

Keywords: Micro actuator, deep reactive ion etching (DRIE), line edge roughness (LER), scanning electron microscope (SEM)

DOI: 10.3233/JAE-2010-1211

Journal: International Journal of Applied Electromagnetics and Mechanics, vol. 33, no. 3-4, pp. 985-990, 2010