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The fabrication of silicon nanostructures by local gallium implantation and cryogenic deep reactive ion etching

N Chekurov1,2, K Grigoras1,2, A Peltonen2,3, S Franssila1,2 and I Tittonen1,2

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We show that gallium-ion-implanted silicon serves as an etch mask for fabrication of high aspect ratio nanostructures by cryogenic plasma etching (deep reactive ion etching). The speed of focused ion beam (FIB) patterning is greatly enhanced by the fact that only a thin approx. 30 nm surface layer needs to be modified to create a mask for the etching step. Etch selectivity between gallium-doped and undoped material is at least 1000:1, greatly decreasing the mask erosion problems. The resolution of the combined FIB-DRIE process is 20 lines µm−1 with the smallest masked feature size of 40 nm. The maximum achieved aspect ratio is 15:1 (e.g. 600 nm high pillars 40 nm in diameter).


PACS

81.16.-c Methods of nanofabrication and processing

61.46.-w Structure of nanoscale materials

81.65.Cf Surface cleaning, etching, patterning

52.77.Bn Etching and cleaning

81.07.-b Nanoscale materials and structures: fabrication and characterization

61.72.uf Ge and Si

Subjects

Surfaces, interfaces and thin films

Plasma physics

Condensed matter: structural, mechanical & thermal

Nanoscale science and low-D systems

Dates

Issue 6 (11 February 2009)

Received 17 October 2008, in final form 26 November 2008

Published 14 January 2009



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