Method of fabricating a device having a desired non-planar surface or profile and device produced thereby
AssigneeThe Regents of the University of Michigan
InventorsKhalil Najafi, Chou Tsung-Kuan
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Abstract
A method of fabricating a device having a desired non-planar surface or profile and device produced thereby are provided. A silicon wafer is first coated with silicon nitride, patterned, and DRIE to obtain the desired etch profile. Silicon pillars between trenches are then etched using an isotropic wet etch, resulting in a curved well. The wafer is then oxidized to −2 μm to smooth the surface of the well, and to protect the well from an ensuing planarization process. The nitride is then selectively removed, and the wafer surface is planarized by removing the Si left in the field regions using either a maskless DRIE or CMP. Finally, the oxide is etched away to produce a wafer with a curved surface.
Claims20
A method of fabricating a device having a desired non-planar surface or profile, the method comprising:
- providing a substrate including a field region having a plurality of spatially-arranged open areas;
- and
- selectively removing material from the plurality of open areas at different rates to form the desired non-planar surface or profile, wherein the selectively removing comprises,
- etching a plurality of trench patterns in the substrate using deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) to form pillars of different heights, wherein bottoms of the trench patterns form the desired non-planar surface or profile, and
- removing the pillars of the trench patterns to form the desired non-planar surface or profile.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.