1. Development of a compact vacuum- and hydrogen-annealing machine for surface transformation of silicon and its applications to micro-optical devices
- Author
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Yoshiaki Kanamori, Shinya Fujihira, Kazuhiro Hane, and Kenichi Douzono
- Subjects
Materials science ,Hydrogen ,Silicon ,business.industry ,Silicon dioxide ,Annealing (metallurgy) ,chemistry.chemical_element ,Surfaces and Interfaces ,Partial pressure ,Condensed Matter Physics ,Surfaces, Coatings and Films ,Volumetric flow rate ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,Optics ,chemistry ,Torr ,Surface roughness ,Optoelectronics ,business - Abstract
The authors developed a compact vacuum- and hydrogen-annealing machine to transform and smooth silicon surfaces for silicon microoptical devices. Two kinds of configurations, named sealing type and flowing type, were evaluated. The sealing type configuration was designed to anneal a sample inside a H2 gas environment contained within a quartz tube. On the other hand, the flowing type configuration was designed to anneal the sample using a flowing H2 gas environment. The machine sizes were 1.6 m in width, 0.55 m in depth, and 1.3 m in height. Control ranges of temperature and pressure were between 20 °C and 1300 °C and between 4.1×10−7 and 760 Torr, respectively. Using the flowing type configuration, the samples were successfully smoothed at conditions of H2 partial pressure of 50 Torr, temperature of 1230 °C, H2 gas flow rate of 1 slm, and annealing time of 11 min. By transforming the surface, microlenslike structures with the size of the order of several micrometers and a sinusoidal grating were also fab... more...
- Published
- 2008
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