This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------16CEDFADA4C2E3CE4D8EEFFE Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello all, I am Ofir Degani, a Ph.D. student at the Technion - Israel Institute of technology. We have started to develop a surface micromachining process with Polyimide as sacrificial layers and Aluminum (or other metals) as the structural layer. This is to produce some electrostatic actuators mainly for experiments with the electrostatic actuation. We are spin coating the polyimide (thickness about 5 micron but can be varied) and curing it at 220C for one hour. The evaporating of the aluminum structural layer is done at about 2*10e-7 torr. We have used as references the works of: 1) Seok-Whan Chung et. al, Sens&Act. ,54 ,1996, 464-467 2) Jong-Woo Shin et. al, Sens&Act., 66, 1998, 144-149 3) Texas Instrument DMD work. We have achieved to release the structural layer by Oxygen plasma as was recommended by 1+2. Nevertheless, the aluminum actuators were bent towards the silicon wafer surface. It seems that there is a stress gradient in the aluminum layer. I would appreciate any suggestions or knowledge or paper referring to this problem and how to solve it and reduce the stress gradient in the aluminum layer. (1),(2) and (3) have succeeded in that so it probably can be done but it is not written in these papers how. Thank you and SHALOM Ofir --------------16CEDFADA4C2E3CE4D8EEFFE Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="ofird.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for ofir degani Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="ofird.vcf" begin:vcard n:BOCHOBZA-DEGANI;OFIR tel;cell:972-54-889646 tel;fax:972-4-8322185 tel;home:972-4-8200520 tel;work:972-4-8292763 x-mozilla-html:FALSE org:Technion - Israel Institute of Technology;Kidron's Microelectronics Research Center - Electrical Engineering Department adr:;;Technion City;Haifa;;32000;Israel version:2.1 email;internet:ofird@tx.technion.ac.il http://www-ee.technion.ac.il/~ofird/ title:Ph.D. candidate fn:Ofir Bochobza-Degani end:vcard --------------16CEDFADA4C2E3CE4D8EEFFE--