Jose: Wafers should be clean, but will always be good to do a piranha clean and a short BOE dip. My device is published in 2004 JMEMS, 3D Micro mirrors... Long time ago. I was etching si which was bonded to a glass layer. This piece was 4cmx4cm, hence I put it onto another Si wafer which the clamp came down. Etch stopped shortly. Then we deposited metal on the backside of glass (where the etched Si was bonded to) which got eletrically connected to the clamp and fixed the problem, -Mehmet -----Original Message----- From:Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2008 17:12:34 To: Subject: Re: [mems-talk] RIE on SOI wafers Dear all, Thank you for the suggestions. I will connect the device layer to the electrode to check if the etching rate of the silicon increases (I just hope the etching rate of the resist will not increase also, because then the selectivity would not improve). About the RIE (not DRIE, unfortunately), I can't fix the bias (it is done with the other parameters). The wafer is slighly doped, and the etching rate is ten times slower than for the bare silicon. I know that in the case of wet etch, sometimes small amounts of dopant change the results drastically. But in the case of plasma etching, Is such a large difference possible due only to the dopant? About the surface: Can I assume that the wafers are ready to use from the box? Or do you think that it would be a good idea to clean them with HF, just in case? Dear Mehmet, I share Jie's question: Which side do you metalize to etch which side? Best regards, Jose