Compatibility study of thin passivation layers with hydrazine for silicon-based MEMS microthruster

Abstract

In this work, the compatibility studies of silicon and its different multilayer structures with hydrazine for possible applications to MEMS have been reported. Grazing incidence x-ray diffraction patterns of the r.f. sputtered Si/SiO2/Si3N4 stack layer show preferably oriented crystalline structure after hydrazine treatment at different temperatures. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic measurement reveals that local bonding of the constituent atoms of the surface layers, where Si–O bond is replaced partially by Si–N bond while treated. Further, the surface morphology carried out by atomic force microscopy exhibits the tendency of reducing surface roughness with the increase in temperature during hydrazine treatment. From the axisymmetric drop shape analysis (ADSA), it is observed that static contact angle changes slightly for different wettability nature of solid surface due to aggregation of crystallites in the valley of the surface fluctuation and anisotropic modification in preferred orientation of the film surface. On the basis of equation of state theory with approximation of solid surface–liquid, interfacial energy was applied to determine the solid surface free energy providing the limited variation in different stack layers. Lastly, the J–V characteristic of the stack layer treated by hydrazine at different temperatures shows multiple current conduction regions with the same current density for varying electric field. Therefore, among various single or multilayer silicon-based thin film combinations, the Si/SiO2/Si3N4 stack layer is the most promising passivation layer for hydrazine-based MEMS applications.