MICROMACHINING OF SILICON MECHANICAL STRUCTURES.

Abstract

Refined processing procedures for producing geometrically highly precise silicon structures are described. The structures are fabricated by the high-precision micromachining of silicon utilizing wet chemical orientation and/or concentration dependent, etching techniques. Very exact processing procedures required to reproducibly achieve good high quality structures with excellent large and small scale uniformity are detailed. Relief structures having features as small as 0. 2 mu m have been produced. Some of the structures and devices attainable will be described including: (1) very high Q torsional oscillators useful as powerful probes of the mechanical properties of a variety of physical systems, (2) unstrained focusing x-ray mirrors, and (3) mu m dimension mechanical 'shadow masks' with multiple slit features having knife-edge acuity of much better than 1 mu m over an area approximately 1 cm**2 and useful for noncontaminative, in situ patterning of thin films deposited in MBE or other vacuum deposition techniques.