Jay, There is about 1nm of native oxide on the SOI wafer. It is possible that is what is causing the undercutting of the Cr. HF last or back-sputter the silicon before chrome deposition may help Best regards, Glenn -----Original Message----- From: Jie Zou [mailto:zoujiepku@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2010 10:34 PM To: General MEMS discussion Subject: [mems-talk] Cr/Au structure under HF etch Hi folks, I defined a gold pattern by e-beam lithography and lift-off. The gold was evaporated on the SOI with ~8nm Cr as the adhesion. After several other fabrications (mainly DRIE), I had some free-standing gold structures sitting on a silicon structure made by the device layer of a SOI wafer. My last step was to release the whole structure by HF etching the buried oxide layer. I used 49% HF for 3min to achieve the necessary undercutting to make sure my structure was free. However part of the gold structure was peeled off. How can I improve it? Is there another adhesion layer that can resist HF better? I tried BOE instead of 49% HF. It didn't help much. Thanks a lot. Jay