CF4/CHF3 plasma in MERIE with backside He cooling. Joe Lonjin Penn State Nanofabrication Facility 190 MRI Building 230 Innovation Blvd University Park, PA 16802 JJL13@psu.edu (814) 865-9284 Fax (814) 865-7173 -----Original Message----- From: Xiaoguang "Leo" Liu [mailto:liuxiaoguang@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 6:42 PM To: General MEMS discussion Subject: [mems-talk] Thick SiO2 etch Dear all For one of my projects, I need to pattern thick thermal oxide of 1.5um. I used 49%HF:DI = 1:6 as the etchant and 20um AZ9260 as a mask (the reason of using this thick resist is that I need to do a through wafer Deep RIE after patterning the SiO2). The etching of the oxide takes more than half an hour in the etchant. My problem is that the photoresist can not stand the HF solution and start to peel off (especially the smaller features) after about 20min. HF also attacks the photoresist reducing the overall thickness of the photoresist, which can impact my later DRIE process. Could anybody illuminate me with a better method to etch the oxide layer without destroying the photoresist?