A New Method for Protection of Anchors in Releasing Microstructure by using XeF2 Etching Process

This paper presents a protection technology of anchors to use xenon difluoride etching process to release micro structure in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems processing. This technology is based on deep reactive ion etching and two-time thermal oxidation technology. Firstly, the trenches around the anchors are formed by using deep reactive ion etching. Secondly, the trenches are filled with thermal silicon dioxide that is hardly etched by xenon difluoride. Robust silicon anchors with protection layer silicon dioxide have been fabricated. Then, 100times100 suspended micro structure array, in which each element consists of two anchors and a micromirror supported by two beams, has successfully been fabricated by using this technology.