Cryogenic Etching of High Aspect Ratio 400 nm Pitch Silicon Gratings

The cryogenic process and Bosch process are two widely used processes for reactive ion etching of high aspect ratio silicon structures. This paper focuses on the cryogenic deep etching of 400 nm pitch silicon gratings with various etching mask materials including polymer, Cr, SiO₂ and Cr-on-polymer. The undercut is found to be the key factor limiting the achievable aspect ratio for the direct hard masks of Cr and SiO₂, while the etch selectivity responds to the limitation of the polymer mask. The Cr-on-polymer mask provides the same high selectivity as Cr and reduces the excessive undercut introduced by direct hard masks. By optimizing the etching parameters, we etched a 400 nm pitch grating to ≈ 10.6 microm depth, corresponding to an aspect ratio of ≈ 53.