Newly developed photosensitive etch protection materials have key advantages over standard photoresists typically used in today's MEMS applications. Using these new materials eliminates the need for silicon nitride (SiN) masks deposited via CVD processes, which require significant investments in processing equipment, utilize extreme processing conditions and contribute to an overall decrease in throughput. This new technology will enhance throughput by reducing the number of process steps and simplify the process flow with minimal impact on overall undercut performance. The polymeric coating serves as a SiN mask replacement for etching silicon substrates in alkaline anisotropic etchants such as KOH and TMAH. The undercut performance observed is larger than that of SiN when etched in KOH, but when alternative alkaline etchants such as TMAH are used, the undercut is identical (1–2% with respect to etch depth). Various factors, such as primer bake, topcoat final cure temperature, etchant concentration and substrate surface conditions, have all been shown to affect undercut results. An additional advantage of this new technology is that it can be easily reworked/removed by solvents, plasma etch, Nano-Strip®, Piranha and RCA cleaning solutions depending on where the removal takes place in the process.