Fabrication of a (100) Silicon Master Using Anisotropic Wet Etching for Embossing

Abstract

To fabricate a (100) silicon hard master, we used anisotropic wet etching for the embossing. The etching chemical for the silicon wafer was a TMAH 25% solution. The anisotropic wet etching produces a smooth sidewall surface inclined at 54.7˚, and the surface roughness of the fabricated master is about 1 nm. After spin coating an organic-inorganic sol-gel hybrid resin on a silicon substrate, we used the fabricated master to form patterns on the silicon substrate. Thus, we successfully obtained patterns via the hot embossing technique with the (100) silicon hard master. Moreover, by using a single hydrophobic surface treatment of the master, we succeeded in achieving uniform surface roughness of the embossed patterns for more than ten embossments.