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Micro and Nano Fabrication pp 205–272Cite as

Etching Technologies

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Abstract

Solid surfaces can be etched by wet processes (wet-chemical or electrochemical), dry processes (physical, chemical, or a combination of both), or mechanical processes (without or with a chemical contribution). The wet etch attack may be chemical by a liquid etchant or electrochemical (a reversal of electrochemical deposition) by an electrolyte under the influence of a current. In physical dry etching , the substrate is bombarded by ions (ion beam etching). Chemical etching may either use a plasma, enhancing the chemical attack by dissociating the etchant’s volatile chemical species (plasma etching), or a vapor (vapor phase etching). Physical-chemical processes combine ion bombardment with chemical attack through dissociated chemical species. Mechanical processes are powder blasting and (on the border between mechanical and physical, with and without a chemical component) cluster beam technologies. Subject to etching may be either the substrate material itself (bulk etching/micromachining) or thin-films at the surface (surface etching/micromachining). Particularly bulk micromachining of single crystal silicon takes advantage of etch-limiting crystal planes for constructing three-dimensional patterns in the substrate material.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Production Technology, Institute for Micro Production Technology, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Garbsen, Germany

    Hans H. Gatzen

  2. KIT Division 5, Physics and Mathematics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany

    Volker Saile

  3. Institute of Electromagnetic Fields, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Jürg Leuthold

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  1. Hans H. Gatzen
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  2. Volker Saile
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  3. Jürg Leuthold
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Correspondence to Hans H. Gatzen .

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Gatzen, H.H., Saile, V., Leuthold, J. (2015). Etching Technologies. In: Micro and Nano Fabrication. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44395-8_4

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