A simple method to optimize the etching uniformity when making a CGH on a thick optical glass substrate is described, which uses a Teflon ring to enclose the substrate during reactive-ion etching (RIE). OCIS codes: (220.4000) Microstructure fabrication; (090.1970) Diffractive optics; (220.1250) Aspherics

Micromachining arbitrary 3D silicon structures for micro-electromechanical systems can be accomplished using gray-scale lithography along with dry anisotropic etching. In this study, we have investigated the use of deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) and the tailoring of etch selectivity for precise fabrication. Silicon loading, the introduction of an O2 step, wafer electrode power, and wafer temp...

This paper presents the ultrahigh speed microrobot actuation for cell manipulations in a microfluidic chip. The Ni and Si composite fabrication was employed to form the optimum riblet shape to reduce fluid friction on the microrobot by anisotropic Si wet etching and deep reactive ion etching. The evaluation experiments show the effectiveness of the riblet surface, especially in the case of high...

At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) we are using deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) based silicon micromachining to develop the critical waveguide components at submillimeter wavelengths that will lead to highly integrated multi-pixel spectrometers, imagers, and radars. The advantage of DRIE over wet anisotropic etching is that DRIE exhibits little crystal plane dependence and therefore reduce...

This paper reports on a practical modification of the two-step time-multiplexed plasma etching recipe (also known as the Bosch process) to chieve high aspect-ratio sub-micron wide trenches in silicon. Mixed argon and oxygen plasma depassivation steps are introduced in between the assivation and etching phases to promote the anisotropic removal of the passivation layer at the base of the trench....

This paper presents a developed process for fabrication of hollow silicon microneedle arrays. The inner hollow hole and the fluidic reservoir are fabricated in deep reactive ion etching. The profile of outside needles is achieved by the developed fabrication process, which combined isotropic etching and anisotropic etching with inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etcher. Using the combination of S...

As the field of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) has diversified, a growing number of applications are limited by the current planar technology available for fabrication. Gray-scale technology offers a method of fabricating 3-D structures in MEMS utilizing a single lithography step. Before gray-scale technology can be accepted as a universal/standard fabrication technique, methods for co...

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have been used to study surface reaction dynamics of Si and Si02 etching by halogens. To perform classical MD simulations for Si02 etching reaction by halogens (C1 or F), we have constructed new sets of twoand three-body interatomic potential functions based on potential energy data obtained from ab initio quantum mechanical calculations of the electronic sta...

A method based on the sidewall transfer technique for fabricating two-dimensional (2D) nano-mold on a silicon substrate was developed. Instead of using expensive nanolithography, the authors fabricated 2D silicon nano-mold using standard ultraviolet lithography, conformal deposition of gold by radio frequency sputtering, argon sputter etching and deep reactive ion etching (DRIE). This technique...

A microengineered alignment bench for a nanospray ionization system is described. The bench combines a V-groove mount for a capillary-based nano-ESI source with an extraction electrode and allows accurate axial and transverse alignment of the capillary. An input channel and plenum for nebulizer gas are also demonstrated. The structure is formed in two halves, which are assembled by stacking. El...