• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.224-232
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• 2000

Aluminum metal process in surface micromachining enables to fabricate Al electrodes or Al structures, which improve electrical characteristics by reducing contact- and line-resistance or makes the whole process to be simple by using oxide as sacrificial layer. However, it is not possible to use conventional sacrificial layer etching process, because HF solution attacks aluminum as well as sacrificial oxide. The mixed solution of BHF and glycerine as an alternative shows the adequate properties to meet with this end. The exact etching properties, however, are sensitively depends on the geometry of the released structure, because the most etching process of sacrificial layer proceeds to the lateral direction in narrow space. Also, the surface roughness of aluminum affects to the etching characteristics. This paper reports experimental results on the effect of microstructure and surface roughness of aluminum to the etching properties. Considering these effects, we propose the optimized etching condition, which can be used practically for the fabrication of aluminum electrodes and microstructures by using standard surface micromachining process without modification or additional process.

• Applied Microscopy
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.405-415
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• 1999

In general, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is usually used in the investigation of polymer microstructure. Microtoming, solution casting, staining and carbon replica method are frequently introduced to the study of the polymer morphology with TEM, however the sample preparation procedure of those techniques is very difficult, and it takes a long time. The purpose of this study is to develop a new sample preparation technique which is suitable for the investigation of the various shapes and species of polyolefin microstructure by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). By modifying the conventional chemical etching method, we developed a new chemical etching technique and sample preparation procedure that are suitable for SEM study of polymer microstructure. In this study the permanganate etching method is introduced and the optimum etching condition are determined by simply adjusting the etchant formulation, concentration and etching time. This technique has shown good reproducibility and it's morphological results agree well with other works on various types of microstructures such as spherulite characterization of isotatic polypropylene $(\alpha/\beta)$, polyethylene and poly-propylene copolymer characterization, and the study of lamellar growth pattern of unsheared or oriented materials. This technique has also been applied to the industrial fields for characterization of the polyolefin film, automobile products and the others.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.548-554
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• 2016

In this study, semi-aqueous solutions containing carboxylic acids such as oxalic acid (OA), lactic acid (LA) and citric acid (CA) were formulated for the removal of copper etching residues produced at the interconnection process, and their characteristics were analyzed. Carboxylic acids in the solutions were apt to form various copper complexes according to the value of pH. Semi-aqueous solution containing 10 wt% CA showed the lowest etching rate of copper in the range from pH2 to pH7 and the highest selectivity in the range of pH 2 to pH 4. However, the cleaning solution containing 10 wt% LA revealed the superior selectivity at the range from pH 5 to pH 7. Appropriate selection of carboxylic acid should be required to improve the performance of cleaning solution. In the case of CA, the etching selectivity of copper oxide complex to copper was increased with the concentration of CA in the solution, when the solutions contain over 5 wt% CA, the copper interconnection layer has a metallic copper surface more than 88% in the area. The result shows that CA contained semi-aqueous solution has a relatively good cleaning ability.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.632-638
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• 2021

With the copper interconnection in the semiconductor process, complex residues including copper oxide, fluoride, and polymeric fluorocarbon are formed by plasma etching. In this study, a cleaning solution was prepared with a component having an amine group (-NH₂) and a carboxyl group (-COOH), and the characteristics of removing post-etch residues in the copper wiring process were analyzed. In the cleaning solution containing an amine group, the length of the component substituted with nitrogen and the length of the carbon chain influenced the cleaning effect, and the etching rate of copper oxide increased as the pH of the cleaning solution increased. The activity of the amine group is in the basic region, and the activity of the carboxyl group is in the acidic region, and the cleaning process proceeds through complex formation with copper or copper oxide in each region.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.16-23
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• 1971

In this study , fluoborte solution consisting of lead fluoborate, tin fluoborate and cupric acetate was used. By addition of small amount of Cu+= ion to the solution, the Cu content of deposition layer was almost controlled less than 5%. The amount of Cu in deposition layer was almost constant without any influence of Pb++ & Sn++ in the solution, and the amount of Pb was increased by the increase of total concentration of Pb++ +Sn++ in the solution, and the amount of Pb was increased by the increase of total concentration of Pb++ +Sn++ in the solution . Agitation of plating solution & low current density result in the increase of Cu content. Analyzing of microscopic structures and etching tests of the deposited alloy, it was believed that the alloy had a lamellar structure consisting of copper rich lamellar and lead rich layer.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.650-656
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• 2018

The TFT-LCD industry is a kind of large-scale industrial Giant Microelectronics device industry and has a similar semiconductor process technology. Wet etching forms a relatively large proportion of the entire TFT process, but the number of published research papers on this topic is limited. The main reason for this is that the components of the etchant, in which the reaction takes place, are confidential and rarely publicized. Aluminum (Al) and copper (Cu), which have been used in recent years for the manufacture of large area LCDs, are very difficult materials to process using wet etching. Cu, a low-resistance material, can only be used in the wet etching process, and is used as a substitute for Al due to its high speed etching, low failure rate, and low power consumption. Further, the abnormal reaction of hydrogen peroxide ($H_2O_2$), which is used as an etching solution, requires additional piping and electrical safety devices. This paper proposes a method of minimizing the damage to the plant in the case of adverse reactions, though it cannot limit the adverse reaction of hydrogen peroxide. In recent years, there have been many cases in which aluminum etching equipment has been changed to copper. This paper presents a countermeasure against abnormal reactions by implementing safety PLC with a high safety grade.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.143-147
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• 2017

To evaluate surface characteristics and improve crystalline quality of AlN single crystal grown by physical vapor transport (PVT) method, wet chemical etching process using $KOH/H_2O_2$ mixture in a low temperature condition and thermal annealing process was proceeded respectively. Conventional etching process using strong base etchant at a high temperature (above $300^{\circ}C$) had formed over etching phenomenon according to crystalline quality of materials. When it occurred to over etching phenomenon, it had a low reliability of dislocation density because it cannot show correct number of etch pits per estimated area. Therefore, it was proceeded to etching process in a low temperature (below $100^{\circ}C$) using $H_2O_2$ as an oxidizer in KOH aqueous solution and to be determined optimum etching condition and dislocation density via scanning electron microscope (SEM). For improving crystalline quality of AlN single crystal, thermal annealing process was proceeded. When compared with specimens as-prepared and as-annealed, full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the specimen as-annealed was decreased exponentially, and we analyzed the mechanism of this process via double crystal X-ray diffraction (DC-XRD).

• Clean Technology
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.14-18
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• 2019

In general after the etching process, waste etching solution contains metals. (ex. Nickel (Ni), Chromium (Cr), Zinc (Zn), etc.) In this work, we proposed a recycling process for waste etching solution and refining from waste liquid contained nickel to make nickel metal nano powder. At first, the neutralization agent was experimentally selected through the hydrolysis of impurities such as iron by adjusting the pH. We selected sodium hydroxide solution as a neutralizing agent, and removed impurities such as iron by pH = 4. And then, metal ions (ex. Manganese (Mn) and Zinc (Zn), etc.) remain as impurities were refined by D2EHPA (Di-(2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid). The nickel powders were synthesized by liquid phase reduction method with hydrazine ($N_2H_4$) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH). The resulting nickel chloride solution and nickel metal powder has high purity ( > 99%). The purity of nickel chloride solution and nickel nano powders were measured by EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic) titration method with ICP-OES (inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer). FE-SEM (field emission scanning electron microscopy) was used to investigate the morphology, particle size and crystal structure of the nickel metal nano powder. The structural properties of the nickel nano powder were characterized by XRD (X-ray diffraction) and TEM (transmission electron microscopy).

• Clean Technology
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.240-246
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• 2021

The waste etching solution for chip on film (COF) contained about 3.5% copper, and it was recovered through cementation using iron samples. The effect of cementation with plate, chip, and powder iron samples was investigated. The molar ratio (m/r) of iron to copper was used as a variable in order to increase the recovery rate of copper. As the molar ratio increased, the copper content in the solution rapidly decreased at the beginning of the cementation reaction. Before and after the reaction, the copper content of the solution was determined by Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) using copper concentration according to time. After cementation at room temperature for 1 hour, the recovery rate of copper had increased the most in the iron powder sample, having the largest specific surface area of the samples, followed by the chip and plate samples. The recovered copper powder was characterized for its crystalline phase, morphology, and elemental composition by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), respectively. Copper and unreacted iron were present together in the iron powder samples. The optimum condition for recovering copper was obtained using iron chips with a molar ratio of iron to copper of 4 giving a recovery rate of about 98.4%.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.379-384
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• 1994

Room-temperature photoluminescent porous Si has been formed by etching Si wafer u-ith the solution of $HF:HNO_{3}: H_{2}O$=l : 5 : 10. We have observed photoluminescence(PL) spectra similar to those reported recently for porous-Si films formed by anodic etching with HF solutions. We have also investigated the dependence of PI, spectra on the etching time which was varied from 1 to 10 minutes. We found that 5-minute etching gave us the strongest PL intensity. We also found by atomic force microscopy( AFM) measurements that the surface fearure size became smaller for longer etching time and the average feature size of the etched Si wafer for 5-minute was about 1, 500~2, 000$\AA$. This indicates that the surface feature of the etched porous Si affects the PL intensity of the sample.