Fabrication Of Amorphous Carbon Micro-Membranes By Deep Reactive Ion Etching Technique

Abstract

The primary problem of large intrinsic compressive stress induced during the deposition of amorphous carbon (a-C) films prepared by Filtered Cathodic Vacuum Arc (FCVA) technique has been overcome by preparing the films in conjuction with high substrate pulse biasing. However, it has been observed that the stress reduction is achieved by sacrificing the mechanical properties such as hardness and Young's modulus of the films. Hence the mechanical properties of the films were studied as a function of substrate bias voltage. In addition, to demostrate these low stress films, one-micron thick, a-C membranes were fabricated by photolithography technique together with deep reactive ion etching (deep RIE) and wet KOH etching.