The Fabrication of Megasonic Agitated Module(MAM) for the Improved Characteristics of Wet Etching

The MAM(Megasonic Agitated Module) has been fabricated for improving the characteristics of wet etching. The characteristics of the MAM are investigated during the wet etching with and without megasonic agitation in this paper. The adoption of the MAM has improved the characteristics of wet etching, such as the etch rate, etch uniformity, and surface roughness. Especially, the etching uniformity on the entire wafer was less than ${\pm}1%$ in both cases of Si and glass. Generally, the initial root-mean-square roughness($R_{rms}$) of the single crystal silicon was 0.23nm. Roughnesses of 566nm and 66nm have been achieved with magnetic stirring and ultrasonic agitation, respectively, by some researchers. In this paper, the roughness of the etched Si surface is less than 60 nm. Wet etching of silicon with megasonic agitation can maintain nearly the original surface roughness during etching. The results verified that megasonic agitation is an effective way to improve etching characteristics of the etch rate, etch uniformity, and surface roughness and that the developed micromachining system is suitable for the fabrication of devices with complex structures.