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“Background Porous learn more silicon (PS), which is normally formed via the partial electrochemical dissolution of crystalline silicon in a HF/ethanol solution [1], has gained significant attention due to its biocompatibility and stability. With a large surface area and easily tunable porosity (which directly determines the refractive index), PS has been demonstrated in applications including light emitting diodes [2], sensors [3, 4] and photo detectors [4, 5]. However,

previously reported PS tunable microelectromechanical system (MEMS) devices for gas sensors [6], biological sensors [7] and optical filters [8, 9] have mainly been fabricated through a predefined patterning process utilizing a defined pattern or mask on Si prior to anodization, resulting in unwanted under-mask etching and very low lateral uniformity Vorinostat in PS films. The predefined patterning technique limits complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatibility of the process

selleck screening library for making further complex structures [6], limiting PS use as a separate material in MEMS device fabrication. PS-suspended structures can provide increased sensitivity in MEMS devices through the large surface area and the ability to use porosity to control mechanical properties [10–12]. Sensing using released microbeams has been studied for a variety of materials, including Si, Si3N4 and AlN [13–15]. Suspended PS structures have previously been fabricated and released [12, 16], but the porosity of those films was not uniform, leading to significant bending from internal stress, made worse by the very low stiffness of the material. Furthermore, previous PS MEMS have been large or poorly defined [7, 8]. This negates a significant advantage of MEMS, which is that their small size provides both robustness against inertial effects and high resonance, the latter being essential for high sensitivity

biosensors [17]. Thymidylate synthase Uniform porosity and well-defined porous silicon patterning is required to achieve a high-quality MEMS technology. Furthermore the process must be compatible with a high-volume (scalable) manufacture process. Lai et al. demonstrated a process based on N2 annealing which reduced oxidation in ambient air and made the films compatible with standard CMOS photolithography [18]. This approach makes PS a suitable platform for creating patterned structures of uniform porosity, and allows multistep processing through repeated anodization, annealing and photolithography to be performed. In this work, we demonstrate that well-defined, laterally uniform porosity PS microbeams can be successfully fabricated and released. A process based on anodization, annealing, RIE, repeated photolithography, lift off and electropolishing is presented, which is designed with CMOS compatibility in mind. Process yield along with length of microbeam was studied, and surface profilometry of fabricated structures of PS microbeams was performed.