Geometrical parameters measurement of surface functionalized micromachined micro-cantilever using optical method

Micro-cantilever arrays with different dimensions are fabricated by micromachining technique onto silicon <1 00> substrate. These sputtered gold-coated micro-cantilevers were later surface-functionalized. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and optical diffraction with laser source are employed to characterize the morphology and image measurement of the micro-cantilever arrays, respectively. The spatial resolution produced in the proposed image measurement method is approaching 1 um, and the repeatable precision is confirmable in nanometers. Compared with conventional AFM and SEM measurement techniques, the proposed method has demonstrated sufficient flexibility, repeatability, and reliability. The experimental results have been analyzed and presented in this paper for MEMS micro-cantilevers. The scanning white light interferometrybased, two-point high-resolution optical method is presented for characterizing micro-cantilevers and other MEMS microstructures. In this piece of work, we investigate the microstructure fabrication and image measurement of geometrical parameters such as length, width, and step height of micro-cantilevers fabricated using bulk micromachining technique onto silicon <100> substrate.