Fabrication of Arrays of the Three-dimensional Microstructures on a Substrate Using the Combined Etching Processes

Abstract

Anisotropic etching is a useful processing method for the fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) microstructures on single crystal silicon (SCS) substrates. In this paper, we have fabricated the arrays of 3D convex microstructures using the combined etching process which includes two types of anisotropic etching process. The arrays of the micropillar structures with vertical sidewalls were firstly fabricated on the substrate surface using deep reactive ion etching (D-RIE) of SCS. Furthermore, anisotropic wet etching of the micropillars was performed in the etching solution and the shape of the additionally-etched 3D microstructures was investigated. We have also suggested the potential of the combined etching process to decrease the fabrication time of the arrays of micro pyramid which are usually fabricated using only the anisotropic wet etching of SCS.