| AVS 58th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition | |
| Plasma Science and Technology Division | Thursday Sessions |
| Session PS-ThP |
| Session: | Plasma Science and Technology Poster Session |
| Presenter: | Yuki Nishimori, BEANS Project, Japan |
| Authors: | Y. Nishimori, BEANS Project, Japan U. Shinji, BEANS Project, Japan K. Tomohiro, BEANS Project, Japan S. Masakazu, University of Tokyo and BEANS Project, Japan G. Hashiguchi, Shizuoka University and BEANS Project, Japan |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
The Neutral Beam Etching (NBE) system has been expected to provide a damage-free top-down process for organic and inorganic materials and facilitate the practical development of future Nano scale devices
In order to examine the mechanical damage-free effect by NBE, we have conducted NBE surface treatment to microcantilever formed over an 8 –inch wafer from the upper surface several times, and measured the resonance frequency and the quality factor (Q-factor) of 52 cantilevers after each treatment.
The NBE treatment removes about 50nm, 100nm, and 500nm thick silicon surface layer, respectively.
The Q-factor of cantilevers is attributed by summation of various kinds of energy dissipation mechanisms such as air damping, thermo elastic damping, support, and surface dissipation.
Based on the theoretical consideration of mechanical vibration, we have designed the microcantilever having 30 um in width, 150 um in length and 2 um in thickness, by which the surface energy dissipation become dominant compared to other ones in high-vacuum condition.
In general, Q-factor is a function of the resonant frequency (fr) so that we can’t argue the effect of NBE treatment from the Q-factor change as it is. Therefore we adopt the values Q-factor divided by resonant frequency (Q/fr value) which becomes independent of the thickness in case that the Q-factor is dominated by the surface dissipation and is a good parameter to represent surface dissipation.
From the viewpoint of transition of Q/fr value taken after each NBE treatment, surface dissipation of the cantilever was increased with each treatment process and saturated after adequate NBE treatment.
This indicates that surface damage introduced during fabrication process can be removed completely by slight surface etching using NBE.
In the conference, we will report the precise results of the NBE treatment experiment.