LITHOGRAPHIC TECHNOLOGIES FOR SUBMICRONIC PATTERNS DESIGN APPLIED IN MICROSENSORS DOMAIN

Abstract

The present article is based on the results of a project that had as main objective to achieve submicronic patterns using different lithography techniques - electron beam lithography and atomic force microscopy lithography. Ways to obtain these patterns were tested on silicon and copper substrates, following their use for designing and experimenting of microsensors models. Predefined complex geometric shapes of the patterns could be fully realized using electron beam lithography on the tested substrates. Submicronic patterns simpler compared to those obtained by electron beam lithography were realized using atomic force microscopy lithography on both substrates’ types. Also, based on the atomic force microscopy analysis and the determination of the tribological parameters (e.g. average roughness, surface skewness, coefficient of kurtosis, average profiles) of the surfaces it was demonstrated that patterns with nano-scale depth were obtained using both types of lithography. Following the obtained results, it was concluded that from the two techniques used, electron beam lithography allowed to obtain more complex submicronic patterns. In the future, these will be used to design microsensors integrated in mechatronic and cyber-mixmechatronic systems and microsystems.

Keywords

• submicronic patterns
• electron beam lithography
• atomic force microscopy lithography
• microsensors
• mechatronics
• cyber-mechatronics