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Mitigating re-entrant etch profile undercut in Au etch with an aqua regia variant

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posted on 2022-05-03, 01:19 authored by Mark FergusonMark Ferguson, Mohamed Najah, Frederic Banville, Mohamed Boucherit, Naresh Miriyala, Jacques Renaud, Luc Frechette, Francois Boone, Serge Ecoffey, Serge CharleboisSerge Charlebois
We investigate the re-entrant undercut profile resulting from Au wet etching for patterning micron range thick films using an aqua regia-based solution in comparison with an iodine-iodide-based commercial etchant. Our work discriminates between two undercutting mechanisms: galvanic acceleration of etch rate at the Au adhesion or barrier layer, and delamination-based undercutting. We tracked etch outcomes of feature size reduction from photoresist size, undercut Au in cross-section and lift-off of small (5-10 μm) features. Results indicate that galvanic undercutting is well-mitigated by the aqua regia solution compared to commercial etchant results. Good Au adhesion eliminates undercut for 500 nm-thick Au and mitigates it by ~80% for 1 μm-thick Au. We discuss the electrochemical origin of this mitigated galvanic undercut.

Funding

MITACS (Project No. IT17922)

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Grant No. RDCPJ 479560 – 15)

Prompt (QuebecInnove) (Grant No. 43_Boone 2015.10)

History

Email Address of Submitting Author

Mark.Ferguson@USherbrooke.ca

ORCID of Submitting Author

0000-0002-5389-9342

Submitting Author's Institution

University of Sherbrooke

Submitting Author's Country

  • Canada

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