Fabrication of poly-silicon microwire using conventional photolithography technique: Positive resist mask vs aluminium hard mask

We have demonstrated a simple and low-cost method to fabricate poly-silicon microwire by conventional photolithography technique. There are two different steps process flow were involved in the conventional photolithography technique which are employed the positive resist as a mask and aluminium (Al) as hard mask. Low pressure chemical vapour deposition (LPCVD) was used to deposit 50 nm poly-silicon layer on the Si-SiO
₂
-Si
₃
N
₄
layer. Wire mask must be first designed using AutoCAD before patterning onto chrome mask. Initially the 300 nm thick layer of positive resist is coated on the sample. Subsequently, the coated sample were exposed to UV light for 10 seconds and followed by development process. The critical part in this development process is to control the development time and resist profile. There are three types of resist profile problems such as underdevelopment, incomplete development and overdevelopment resist profile. These resist profiles problems can negatively affect in the subsequent etch process. Next process is an etching process. For positive resist as a mask process flow, the developed sample was loaded into SAMCO Inductively Coupled Plasma Reactive Ion Etching (ICP-RIE) 10iP to anisotropic etching of poly-silicon for 7 seconds. Meanwhile, for Al as a hard mask, the developed sample was dipped into Aluminium (Al) etchant for 3 minutes then followed by resist stripping and anisotropic etching of poly-silicon as similar to the resist mask process flow. Finally, the dimensions and etch profiles of <; 1um poly-silicon microwire were morphologically characterized using optical microscopy.